Prediction markets

What an event contract actually is

A sports event contract is a binary derivative listed on a designated contract market regulated by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It settles at a fixed payout — usually one dollar — if a stated outcome occurs, and at nothing if it does not. The regulator's own description is that event contracts "are typically structured as swaps" and are "often based on yes-no scenarios, allowing for only two possible outcomes… with a fixed payout (usually $1) and an expiration."^[1]

The term is not defined anywhere in the Commodity Exchange Act or in the Commission's regulations. Its staff confirmed as much in March 2026, locating event contracts inside the statutory definition of a swap — which the letter calls "deliberately broad" — and noting in a footnote that such a contract may alternatively be a futures contract on an excluded commodity.^[2]

The lineage the Commission claims for itself runs from the Iowa Electronic Market in 1988 through a staff no-action letter in 1992 to the designation of the first exchange offering binary options in 2004 — a firm that has since been renamed twice and now trades under a third name — and then to the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which gave the Commission authority to prohibit trading in certain types of event contract. The same page carries a claim the page should quote precisely because it is contested in court: "Prediction markets are federally regulated and under federal law can operate in all 50 states."^[1]

The consequence that matters for this site is structural rather than financial. Because the instrument is a derivative rather than a bet, none of the gambling machinery attaches — no state licence, no state-mandated self-exclusion scheme, no affordability check, no advertising code, no gambling tax. The licensing, advertising, harm and participant-protection apparatus described on betting and sport is built around sportsbooks and does not reach an exchange. The NFL made the same observation from the other side in July 2026, noting that the Commission's proposal imposes no minimum trading age at all.^[20]

How a contract gets listed: nobody approves it in advance

This is the mechanism most reporting misses, and it explains everything downstream. Under the Commodity Exchange Act a registered entity "may elect to list for trading… any new contract… by providing to the Commission… a written certification that the new contract… complies with this chapter". The implementing regulation requires only that the Commission "has received the submission by the open of business on the business day preceding the product's listing."^[3] [4]

The exchange files one business day ahead and lists. Prior Commission approval exists but is voluntary. The Third Circuit summarised the position without controversy: once designated, an exchange "does not need pre-approval before listing contracts, although it must self-certify compliance." The Commission's residual leverage is narrow — it may stay a listing pending proceedings for a false certification, or pending a petition to alter the contract's terms.^[2] [5]

Practice has been tightened twice in 2026, and both advisories are aimed squarely at sport. In July the Commission's staff addressed "the practice of submitting broad, template-style certifications that combine many potential event contract variations into a single certification", which limits its ability to check whether an exchange has adequately evaluated the "settlement methodology, data sources, and core-principles compliance", and reiterated that such certifications "should not be submitted". In August it addressed market-maker, liquidity and incentive-programme filings containing "procedural or substantive deficiencies" — which is the promotional-credit and free-play side of the consumer apps.^[6] [7]

The statute, the regulation, and the gap between them

Everything in the litigation turns on a mismatch between two texts, and it is worth setting them side by side.

The statute. Section 5c(c)(5)(C)(i) of the Commodity Exchange Act provides that, in connection with the listing of contracts in excluded commodities based on an occurrence or contingency, "the Commission may determine that such agreements, contracts, or transactions are contrary to the public interest if" they involve activity unlawful under federal or state law, terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or other similar activity the Commission determines by rule to be contrary to the public interest. Clause (ii) then bars any contract "determined by the Commission to be contrary to the public interest under clause (i)".^[3]

The statute does not ban gaming contracts. The verb is permissive, the enumerated categories are the precondition for a determination rather than a self-executing bar, and absent a determination clause (ii) has nothing to operate on. The Commission has never made such a determination for sports event contracts — a point the Third Circuit found expressly: "To date, the CFTC has not determined that Kalshi's sports-related event contracts are contrary to the public interest."^[3] [5]

The regulation. 17 CFR § 40.11(a), adopted in July 2011, uses a different verb entirely: a registered entity "shall not list for trading or accept for clearing… an agreement, contract, transaction, or swap based upon an excluded commodity… that involves, relates to, or references terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or an activity that is unlawful under any State or Federal law."^[8]

So the regulation reads as a flat, self-executing prohibition and the statute reads as a conditional agency power. Whether a regulation can prohibit more than its statute does is the question that split two federal appeal courts in 2026 — and it is also the question the Commission's own June 2026 proposal would remove, by rewriting the regulation to track the statute.

The rulemaking: proposed, and not finished

The Commission reversed position in February 2026. On the 4th it withdrew the June 2024 event-contracts proposal and its staff withdrew the September 2025 sports advisory, its chairman describing the earlier proposal as reflecting "the prior administration's frolic into merit regulation."^[9]

A staff advisory followed on 12 March 2026, expressly pro-market in tone — prediction markets are "rapidly increasing in popularity… both as a financial asset class and as a proven source of reliable information" — while flagging sports products as higher-risk by name: contracts settling on "injuries to individual sports participants, unsportsmanlike conduct, or physical altercations" and on "the action of a single individual or a small group of individuals, such as officiating actions". It recommended four things for sports contracts: talk to the governing body before self-certifying; explain in the submission whether the contract is consistent with the league's integrity standards; establish information-sharing with the relevant integrity monitoring organisation; and settle on official league data. It also warned that a contract settling on "a consensus of yet-to-be-determined sources" may not satisfy the core principle requiring contracts not readily susceptible to manipulation. The advisory binds nobody: it says so, recording that it "represents only the views of DMO".^[2]

An advance notice of proposed rulemaking published on 16 March 2026 asked six sets of questions, including one on inside information, and drew 3,561 comments. A full proposed rule — Prediction Markets; Public Interest Determinations — followed on 12 June 2026, with comments closing on 27 July and 1,454 filed.^[10] [11]

Three features of that proposal matter. First, it would rewrite § 40.11 to remove the categorical prohibition, replacing "shall not list" with a determination-triggered bar that tracks the statute. Second, it would define "gaming" for the first time, as any activity that participants typically engage in "for purposes of recreation or to entertain others", that "is governed by rules", and that "includes measurable occurrences or outcomes that depend on the participants' luck, skill, or athletic ability" — a definition that on its face captures sport, which the proposal concedes, moving the fight to the public-interest determination instead. Third, it builds a procedural apparatus around that determination: review initiated within 10 days of listing, a statement of concerns at day 15, the registrant's response at day 30, a staff recommendation at day 60 and a decision within 90 days, against a new appendix of public-interest factors.^[11]

A separate proposal of 1 July 2026 would move reporting for fully collateralised event contracts out of the no-action letters that have governed it since 2017 and into the reporting rules proper — the chairman noting that the Commission "will no longer regulate market participants through a patchwork of no-action letters, which serve as band-aids for unworkable regulations."^[12]

No final rule has issued. The rulemaking identifier has produced exactly two documents, both proposals, and no Commission rule concerning event contracts has been published since. Everything on this page that describes what the Commission would require is a proposal.^[11]

The litigation, and the circuit split of 28 August 2026

No court anywhere has entered final judgment on the merits. Every ruling below is preliminary, and every one is subject to a different and lower standard than a final decision.

On 6 April 2026 the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, reviewing a preliminary injunction for abuse of discretion, affirmed it: "Because Kalshi has demonstrated a reasonable chance of success on its argument that the Commodity Exchange Act preempts otherwise applicable state law, we will affirm." The court was explicit about how modest that is — "'Reasonable' does not mean 'more likely than not,' but it does mean 'significantly better than negligible.'" On whether the contracts are swaps it reasoned that the statute requires the event only to be "associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence", that a sports outcome "certainly can be" so associated, and that "The analysis need not go further." It held that both field and conflict preemption apply, the field being the regulation of trading on a designated contract market "rather than as gambling". And it expressly declined to decide the wider question, recording in a footnote that it need not address "whether the Act preempts all state gambling regulation". The injunction runs against New Jersey only; one judge dissented; the district court has never reached the merits.^[5]

On 28 August 2026 the Ninth Circuit went the other way, and this is the most important development in the subject. Reviewing an order dissolving a preliminary injunction, it affirmed in part and remanded in part, holding that the district court had not abused its discretion "because Kalshi did not show a likelihood that the CEA preempts state gaming regulations as applied to its sports event contracts" — while sending Nevada's separate challenge to the exchange's election contracts back to the district court undecided. On the central question it concluded that "these sports event contracts are likely not swaps under the CEA", because the broad reading "is not the best textual reading in context, does not square with the statutory scheme, does not have a limiting principle, and would raise concerns under the major-questions doctrine" — Congress, it said, did not hide an elephant in a mousehole. On the regulation it was blunter still, and directly contrary to the Third Circuit's premise: "Kalshi's self-certification and listing of these contracts is unlawful under this Special Rule, and its associated regulation, 17 C.F.R. § 40.11… the regulation is clear." It rejected both field and conflict preemption, and it expressly rejected the reading advanced by Kalshi "joined now by the CFTC", which had filed as amicus in support.^[13]

The concurrence may matter most. One judge wrote that the special rule "appears to give the CFTC discretion whether to ban gaming contracts altogether, and so the statute does not seem to categorically bar all gaming contracts. However, this question… need not be resolved now because 17 C.F.R. § 40.11 currently bars gaming contracts." Read against the June 2026 proposal, that is the connective tissue of this whole page: if the Commission finalises its rewrite of § 40.11, the Ninth Circuit's principal ground may simply fall away.^[13] [11]

Below those two, the district-court landscape is genuinely split and entirely preliminary. Injunctions have been granted against New Jersey (April 2025), Tennessee (February 2026) and Arizona (May 2026); refused in Maryland (August 2025), Nevada (October 2025), Ohio (March 2026) and New York (July 2026); and one Nevada injunction was dissolved, which is the order the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Appeals are pending, none decided, in the Second, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth and Tenth Circuits. A Michigan state court ordered an exchange to cancel already-executed trades involving Michigan residents — an order the federal regulator overrode in July 2026, staying the exchange's emergency rule change and directing it to fulfil the open trades, its chairman calling the cancellation of executed trades "an unprecedented step that risks a cascading effect on the entire marketplace." A challenge by the Massachusetts Attorney General is before that state's Supreme Judicial Court with no decision published.^{[13] [17] [14]}

The regulator has meanwhile sued the states. Complaints against Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois were filed on 2 April 2026 — not in February, which was an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit — seeking declaratory judgments that federal law grants exclusive authority over event contracts and permanent injunctions against enforcement of preempted state law. By July 2026 the list stood at nine states: Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Arizona was restrained from pursuing criminal charges against regulated exchanges, first by a temporary restraining order on 10 April and then by a preliminary injunction. Kentucky was sued partly over a new special transaction fee on exchanges; Minnesota has the most aggressive statute, making operation of a prediction market a criminal felony from 1 August 2026.^{[15] [16] [17]}

Tribal challenges are pending and none has been decided on the merits: the leading case was dismissed in November 2025 for lack of jurisdiction, not on the gaming statute, and is on appeal. No court has held that sports event contracts violate the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act or any tribal-state compact; allegations in complaints are allegations. A large tribal coalition, and a multi-state coalition of attorneys general, appeared as amici in the Ninth Circuit.^[13] [18]

No petition for certiorari has been granted, and no federal legislation has been enacted. Bills introduced in 2026 run in both directions — one would bar any contract relating to a sporting event or casino-style game while preserving state law; another would strike the enumerated-activities special rule from the statute altogether, which would moot the litigation in the exchanges' favour — and every one of them remains at introduction, with no committee action and no floor vote.^[19] [46]

Who operates them, and what can honestly be said about scale

A caveat has to come first: the Commission's register of designated contract markets does not record which of them list sports contracts. There is no such field, and product-level confirmation must come from each exchange's own filings.^[21]

The exchanges themselves are a mix of old designations and a 2026 wave. Kalshi was designated in November 2020 and permitted intermediated futures trading from January 2025; the exchange now trading as Crypto.com dates from 2004; Polymarket's United States entity was designated in July 2025; and 2026 alone brought six further designations, with applications pending from several sportsbook and exchange operators.^[21]

One widely repeated account of Polymarket's route into the United States is wrong. The September 2025 no-action letter was narrow relief on swap data reporting for binary options executed on a particular exchange and cleared through its clearing house. It did not authorise sports contracts and it did not authorise market entry. The actual route was the acquisition of an already-designated exchange, its July 2025 designation order, and a later amendment removing a provision that had barred futures commission merchants from intermediating or carrying customer accounts.^[22] [23]

The sportsbook industry has entered from three directions. Robinhood is now an exchange owner, not merely a distributor: a joint venture with Susquehanna acquired 90 per cent of an existing exchange in January 2026 for about $79m and launched it in June. DraftKings entered by acquiring a licensed exchange under an agreement of October 2025, recognising a $58.1m operating-licence intangible. FanDuel entered through a joint venture with CME Group, launching in late 2025 with sports contracts in eighteen states and reporting that "the vast majority of the activity" was on sport. One operator has also partially withdrawn: Robinhood ceased offering new sports event contracts in Nevada from 1 December 2025, after a federal court there refused it an injunction.^{[24] [25] [26]}

On scale, the caveats matter more than the numbers. There is no official aggregate of sports event-contract volume in any unit — the Commission's own July 2026 reporting proposal exists precisely because the current regime does not capture these contracts properly. "Volume", "notional", "handle" and "revenue" are four different things: an event contract pays a maximum of one dollar, so a count of contracts traded is not dollars at risk and is not comparable with sportsbook handle. Exchange-reported volume is generally matched-book double counted, and nearly all headline figures are self-reported and unaudited.^[12]

What is verifiable comes from securities filings. Robinhood reported 13.6 billion event contracts traded and $156m of event-contract revenue in the quarter to 30 June 2026, both up more than tenfold year on year — without breaking out the sports share. DraftKings does not disclose prediction-market revenue separately, burying it in an "Other" line alongside fantasy, lottery and interest income. Flutter discloses only a guided loss for FanDuel's prediction-markets business of $200m to $300m for 2026.^[47] For a comparator, the American Gaming Association told the Commission that $167bn was legally wagered on sport in the United States in 2025, producing $17bn of operator revenue and $3.7bn of tax — a different unit again. The incumbents' own estimate of cannibalisation is low single-digit percentage points of handle, and it is a company estimate rather than an independent one.^{[24] [25] [26] [27]} Figures circulating for the private exchanges' revenue and sports share are not independently verified and are not printed here.

Integrity, part one: what the sports bodies actually said

Two findings frame this section, and they point the same way: almost no agreements between exchanges and sports bodies exist, and the leagues said so themselves, in writing, to the regulator.

The one integrity framework announced to date was announced on 31 August 2026, by Kalshi, as part of a multi-year partnership with the United States Tennis Association covering the US Open. On its account, "Kalshi will not offer markets tied to umpire decisions, injuries or code violations", and it has established a data-sharing agreement with the International Tennis Integrity Agency under which market activity will be visible to the sport's integrity staff, with work continuing on standards "built specifically for prediction markets, rather than adapted from frameworks designed for other industries." That is the exchange's account alone: the tennis integrity agency has published nothing about it, and no confirmation from the tournament or the federation was located. It should be read as a company claim not corroborated by the counterparty.^[28]

Six days earlier the same exchange announced deals with five Major League Baseball clubs. Those are brand and sponsorship arrangements — in-stadium signage, social and radio activations, naming rights to a bar — and they are club-level, not league-level. Four weeks before that, the league office had told the regulator it wanted mandatory integrity obligations imposed on exchanges.^[29] For the NBA, NFL, NHL, NCAA, MLS, UFC and every European federation, no agreement of any kind with any exchange was found.

Whether existing participant-betting rules even reach these instruments is a live question. Tennis is the clearest yes, and the coverage comes from the breadth of the definition rather than from naming the instrument. Its anti-corruption programme defines a wager as any arrangement involving a real money stake or financial risk "and/or any other form of financial speculation on the outcome of an unpredictable event", and excludes prize and prediction competitions only "to the extent that they do not involve a Wager". The programme never uses the words "prediction market", "event contract" or "derivative"; the reach comes entirely from that phrase.^[30] The corresponding texts for the NCAA, MLB and the three other major North American leagues are not published in retrievable form and are not summarised here. What the NCAA's own public sports-betting material does show is telling by omission: it describes monitoring more than 22,000 competitions a year, an officials-screening programme, education and threat monitoring — and does not mention prediction markets at all.^[31]

The comment file on the June 2026 proposal is the real story, because it is where the leagues set out what they do not have. All of the following were filed on 27 July 2026.

The NFL wrote that the draft rules "fall significantly short of protecting the integrity of sporting events and the fans who participate in these markets", and asked that exchanges "should be required to enter into information-sharing agreements with the NFL and other sports governing bodies… to establish and enforce a uniform prohibited-persons list" covering league and club employees. It asked the Commission to clarify that trading on material non-public information obtained through a duty of confidence owed to a league, team or governing body — by "athletes, club personnel, coaches, officials, team medical staff, vendors, media partners, and league employees" — is a manipulative or deceptive device under the Act. It asked for a minimum trading age of 21, a centralised self-exclusion list, a margin-trading ban and advertising restrictions. And it added a disclaimer worth quoting: "Nothing herein should be understood as expressing any view that sports event contracts are permissible under the CEA."^[20]

MLB objected to contracts on matters outside the proposal's contemplated scope — "the personal or legal affairs of a professional athlete, a team or league's personnel decisions, the words uttered during a press conference… or the attendance of a celebrity at a sporting event" — and put the enforcement problem in a single sentence: "MLB cannot accept a scenario where an exchange declines to collaborate with a league investigation into trading on an MLB-related event contract on the basis that the contract does not technically 'involve gaming'." It asked that a league's opposition become the primary negative factor, and said the proposal "does not sufficiently delineate that appropriate level of deference."^[32]

The NCAA went furthest, urging that "until a comprehensive oversight framework for collegiate sports prediction markets can be established and implemented, the CFTC not permit trading in collegiate sports event contracts more generally", and identifying the flaw precisely: coordination and information sharing "would simply be factors that the CFTC would weigh… not mandatory requirements." Its best line is the one to build any integrity discussion around: "Traditional derivatives monitoring focuses on market behavior, whereas sports integrity monitoring requires sophisticated monitoring of human behavior. Moreover, even isolated incidents of manipulation that don't shift markets can still have catastrophic impacts on the integrity of sport."^[33]

MLS asked for compulsory third-party integrity monitoring, notification of concerns, cooperation in investigations, prohibition of participation by players, coaches, referees and league personnel, a bar on markets on officiating decisions, injuries and youth events, and settlement on official league data — citing its own record of persuading state regulators to prohibit yellow- and red-card wagers. The five major players' unions filed jointly, asking for "A complete prohibition on contracts based on a 'negative' outcome or that can be manipulated by a single individual", expressly including contracts on whether a word such as "concussion" is spoken during a broadcast, on under-bets, and on whether an athlete is injured or penalised, plus a transparent list of barred participants. Their reason is not abstract: "there are still many instances where fans blame a lost bet on players and resort to abusive and harassing behavior." The American Gaming Association, from the incumbent side, rejected the swap characterisation outright — "these contracts are sports betting" — and said Congress in 2010 did not set out to "create a federal sports book operating out of the CFTC".^{[34] [35] [27]}

What the Commission has actually proposed on all this is a list of factors, not a set of obligations. Positive factors include whether the underlying game is subject to an established integrity framework, whether the exchange has formal information-sharing arrangements with the league or integrity monitor, and whether it maintains appropriate surveillance and trading prohibitions. Negative factors include contracts on player injury, which the Commission says "create perverse financial incentives that could encourage or facilitate physical harm to athletes", and contracts on officiating outcomes, which "resolve on the basis of a small number of discrete human decisions made by identifiable individuals under significant pressure and with limited accountability in real time" — citing the prosecution of a former NBA referee. Its preliminary view is that contracts on aggregate outcomes settled on publicly reported or league-verified data are unlikely to be contrary to the public interest, with an express statement that this is not a safe harbour. League cooperation is therefore something an exchange may earn credit for, not something it must do — which is exactly what the NCAA and the NFL objected to.^[11]

Integrity, part two: monitoring, and the one thing that has been found

The strongest verified international finding is a first rather than a detection. The Council of Europe's Group of Copenhagen — the network of national platforms under the Macolin Convention described on match-fixing — ran an integrity monitoring operation covering every match of the 2026 World Cup, mobilising fourteen national platforms from a network of more than 45 members in coordination with the tournament's own task force. It monitored 104 matches, placed fifteen under enhanced monitoring, issued seven Yellow Notices and assessed twelve major controversies. And, in its own words: "For the first time, the Group of Copenhagen also conducted continuous monitoring of prediction markets. These markets present new integrity challenges, allowing users to wager on a wide range of events, often anonymously and using payment methods that are difficult to trace."^[36]

The release attributes none of its seven notices to prediction markets and reports no finding of suspicious activity on them. It reports that monitoring happened. That is not the same as a detection, and it should not be upgraded into one.

The commercial monitoring sector has moved faster in marketing than in contracts. One integrity firm sells a product line expressly aimed at detecting insider trading by people with access to material non-public information, with a distinct sports variant — but every partnership it announced through 2026 is with a sports body rather than an exchange, and no exchange client has been announced. A second, larger data company now treats prediction markets as a customer vertical alongside betting and gaming, and has published no position on event contracts. Two further monitoring bodies could not be checked at all, so no inference should be drawn about their positions.^[37] [38]

No verified integrity incident involving a sports event contract exists. No athlete has been found to have traded one, and no published instance of suspicious sports trading flagged on a United States exchange was located. The Commission's proposal says it has considered surveillance data, integrity referrals and identified instances of attempted manipulation, but publishes no detail.^[11]

The two enforcement actions brought so far are settled orders, findings by consent rather than litigated adjudications, and neither is a sports case. In July 2026 a former congressman consented to disgorgement of $17,569.98, a $17,500 penalty and a three-year trading ban over a contract on who would attend the State of the Union, having posted publicly about his own plans while trading it. In August 2026 a White House teleprompter operator consented to disgorgement of $107,539.02, a $65,000 penalty and a three-year ban for misappropriating material non-public information obtained through federal government employment and trading presidential-mention contracts — a case in which the exchange itself assisted. Two further matters, also non-sports, have been charged and not settled.^[39] [40]

The honest summary is this: the integrity architecture around sports event contracts consists today of one contested bilateral agreement, a set of proposed rules, and a first-ever monitoring exercise that reported nothing. Everything else is leagues asking for obligations that do not yet exist.

Outside the United States

The United Kingdom already runs the split the United States is fighting over, and it is the most useful comparison available. Sports spread betting is a regulated investment activity supervised by the Financial Conduct Authority; sports fixed-odds betting sits with the Gambling Commission. The hook is Article 85 of the Regulated Activities Order, which captures rights under a contract for differences or any other contract whose purpose is to secure a profit or avoid a loss by reference to fluctuations in "an index or other factor designated for that purpose in the contract" — the limb that makes a spread bet on total runs or total corners an investment rather than a bet — and Article 85(4A), which brings in "a derivative contract of a binary or other fixed outcomes nature… settled in cash". Firms operating the leading British sports spread-betting brand state their FCA authorisation on their own pages.^[41] [42] Neither British regulator has published anything located on prediction markets, though the search infrastructure failed rather than returning a null result, so that absence is unconfirmed rather than established.

Switzerland is the one fully verified foreign block. The Swiss gambling supervisory authority publishes a statutory access blocklist, and the list dated 25 August 2026 contains both of the two largest exchanges by name, along with two copycat domains.^[43] France's regulator recorded in November 2024 that one exchange had ceased offering its services on French territory following the regulator's intervention.^[44]

Beyond those two, a great many blocks and bans are reported and could not be verified from any regulator's own notice — among them Brazil, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Greece, Hungary, South Korea, India, Australia, Canada and Singapore. They are not asserted here. What can be said is that one exchange's own member agreement is reported to list 55 restricted jurisdictions, including most of the above.^[45] No statement from any European Union-level securities or gaming regulator on event contracts was located.

The structural observation the site has made before is worth restating in its sharpest form. The instrument is regulated as a derivative by a financial regulator with no gambling remit; the harm-reduction, advertising and participant-protection machinery built over two decades attaches to sportsbooks and not to exchanges; and the participant-integrity problem — an athlete, an official or an insider trading on what they know — is identical in both. Whichever way the United States courts and the rulemaking end, that gap is the encyclopedic content here, not the litigation scoreboard.