World Sports Exchange

Exclusive: The book trailer for "Odds Man Out" is live! Our friend and hall of fame broadcaster, Jim Lampley, narrated. Check it out. youtu.be/Ew6LqnHUNaM?si=ruDH…

Prop Alert: @AZCardinals TE @mcbtrey hasn't had a TD in his last two games. Going back to week 17 of the 2024 season, McBride has not had a scoreless stretch of more than two games. @Lions have allowed 4 TE TDs on the season, and in 3 of 4 games. If you were early, some books had +120. Current prices for an anytime McBride TD range from even to +110. Good luck. #themoreyouknow #sportsbetting #props

There is nothing in this @nytimes obituary about Jon Kyl's multi-year fight against sports betting. For years, he unsuccessfully attempted to pass his anti-gambling bill. Undeterred, the legislation was added at the last minute without a vote as Title VIII of the SAFE Port Act right before it was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 13, 2006. It became the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006 and required the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board to establish regulations forcing banks and payment systems to identify and block "restricted transactions." It prohibited gambling businesses from knowingly accepting most forms of payment,credit cards, electronic transfers, checks and similar financial transactions from online gambling companies. This had a devastating effect on offshore sportsbooks, including World Sports Exchange. Coincidentally, Kyl would go on to a prominent role at Covington and Burling after leaving the Senate. The @NFL was one of Covington's top clients as it lobbied for years to keep sport betting illegal. Kyl's crusade is detailed in Jay Cohen's book "Odds Man Out." nytimes.com/2026/09/17/obitu…

Check out this interview with @jeffedelstein and Jay Cohen. This was a great discussion. Thanks to Jeff and his team.

The Ninth Circuit just ruled 3-0 that Kalshi cannot block Nevada from overseeing its sports prediction markets as unlicensed gambling. Here's the link to the full ruling. cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datasto… Now, we've been following Kalshi's legal morass. There are a lot of fantastic people writing about this and offering informed takes - @WALLACHLEGAL , @billsperos, @howardstutz, @DustinGouker and others. Read their posts on this. Admittedly, we've been out of the game for a while so we're not the experts here. However, we have the scars from our own battles with the U.S. government. We were a sports and event futures exchange operating offshore, but we wanted to the U.S. to come and regulate us. Imagine if they dealt with this 25 years ago. We'd be in a better place. Anyway, we digress, here's our stream of consciousness as we read and try to digest the ruling. The court essentially said this is sports betting. The judges weren't persuaded by Kalshi's argument that it is fundamentally different from a sportsbook due to the fact that: Kalshi isn't necessarily the counterparty; Kalshi doesn't establish traditional sportsbook odds; Kalshi doesn't profit when a customer loses; contracts trade on an exchange. Kalshi's sports contracts, the court said, don't hedge an existing financial exposure. They create a speculative risk for consumers based upon the outcome of a sporting event. Okay. That gives state gambling regulators a powerful argument since changing the market structure doesn't necessarily change the underlying activity. The CFTC now finds itself in an awkward position. Kalshi's argument has effectively been that the CFTC regulates us, therefore states can't and now, the Ninth Circuit has responded by stating, your own regulation says gaming contracts aren't supposed to be listed. The Ninth Circuit opinion repeatedly frames the issue as a conflict between traditional gambling regulation and the modern prediction-market model. Kalshi's interpretation of "swap" was potentially enormous. The Ninth Circuit pointed out that if a sports bet on Kalshi qualifies as a swap simply because its outcome has some potential economic consequence, then it becomes difficult to explain why the same bet placed at Caesars or another sportsbook wouldn't also qualify. Good point. The court noted the absurd consequences of such an interpretation, basically, ordinary sports bettors could potentially find themselves participating in transactions covered by the Commodities Exchange Act (CEA). The bottom line is the court essentially rejected the proposition that putting a wager onto an exchange, giving it a binary financial contract structure, and allowing it to trade among customers necessarily transforms it into a financial derivative. Judge Lee highlighted the possibility that the CFTC's Special Rule may leave some discretion regarding particular contracts. That means the CFTC may ultimately have to clarify exactly what it believes a legitimate event contract is. And that could be more important than either individual lawsuit. Regardless, we see today's ninth circuit ruling as a major setback for Kalshi's sports business, but not a death blow to prediction markets. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will review this. My head hurts.

This is must see t.v.! Thanks to the @VSiNLive team for the great interview.

Thank you to @VSiNLive, @beatingthebook and @BillKrackman. This was a great, unfiltered discussion. Get your copy of "Odds Man Out" today. #offshore #sportsbetting #futures #PredictionMarket

Throwback Thursday. This photo of Jay Cohen ran alongside a March 2003 @LasVegasSun article written by award-winning journalist Steve Kanigher. Taken by a photographer at Federal Prison Camp, Nellis (FPC Nellis) located outside Las Vegas, the photo caused a minor uproar after the article ran. The flag placed behind Cohen was touching the ground (a breach of flag etiquette) and people noticed. The Las Vegas Sun received several complaints about the photo. Read more about Jay's time at Nellis in his book "Odds Man Out." Go to WSEX.com to order your copy today. #SportsBetting #Prison #CampNellis

Great to see @ArtManteris' book "The Bookie" in the wild. Spotted at @OblongBooks in Millerton, NY. #hudsonvalley #sportsbetting

Thank you @BillKrackman. This was an amazing interview. Please go to wsex.com to order your copy of "Odds Man Out" today.

This is going to be a good one. Get ready.

What does Mark Cuban’s $5.7B Broadcast.com sale have to do with sports betting? More than you think. WSEX sent bettors to AudioNet to hear games & races they were betting on. WSE had the bettors. AudioNet had the streams. The story below.

This was inevitable. "Hedge funds are about to jump into prediction markets in a big way" cnbc.com/amp/2026/08/19/hedg…

The IRS sent out this warning to U.S. bettors (link below). Why does the U.S. continue to treat offshore sportsbooks primarily as a law-enforcement problem instead of asking whether they could be brought into a system of international regulation? In 1996, Jay Cohen and his partners launched WSEX in Antigua, where online gambling was legal. They were early pioneers of an industry that barely existed. The U.S. response wasn't to negotiate with Antigua or establish rules for cross-border betting. It prosecuted Cohen and other offshore operators. Years later, Antigua took the United States to the World Trade Organization, arguing that U.S. laws effectively prevented a WTO member from supplying gambling services to Americans. The WTO dispute became one of the most extraordinary chapters in the history of online gambling. And here's the irony: The U.S., as we know, created a massive legal sports-betting industry of its own. But Americans are still told that offshore operators are inherently suspect. Jay Cohen wasn't simply fighting over whether Americans should be allowed to place a bet. He was fighting over a much bigger question: Who gets to participate in the American gambling market and does geography determine whether a betting business is legitimate? Thirty years later, the technology has changed. The money is vastly bigger. The legal sports-betting industry is everywhere. But the fundamental question hasn't gone away. Maybe the answer isn't to chase offshore sportsbooks. Maybe it's to regulate them. You can read more about Cohen's story in his book "Odds Man Out." irs.gov/compliance/criminal-… Go to WSEX.com to order your copy today.

Throwback Thursday - Aug, 14, 2004. The @RedSox we're 10.5 games behind the Yankees. They'd win later that night to take sole possession of the AL Wild Card. We all know what happened a few months later. Who took the @RedSoX to win it all? #Baseball #SportsBetting #SportsFutures

Still processing our first ever @bet_bash. What a whirlwind. Thanks to @capjack2000 and his tips, we were well prepared. Thank you to @spanky and his amazing team for making us feel so welcome. @CircaSports, @CircaLasVegas and @DerekJStevens were consummate hosts. We can understand why people come back year after year. Fantastic to reconnect with people from our past and to make new friends. Great meeting @FightOnSpooky @jonlerner @andrewcourt1 @halfkelly @astraffon @irishro @4castersbet @davehill77 @Bockino @PatrickE_Vegas @RoxyLasVegas @chadmillman @billsperos @andrewssports @PromoCactus and so many others. See you at BetBash 2027!

Buy a book, get a free @WorldSportsEX tshirt. We have only a of couple of shirts left. Find @StefanPrelogNYC at @bet_bash.

Amazing panel of new book authors at @bet_bash. Huge thanks to @RoxyLasVegas for pulling together this all-star lineup and moderating a great conversation. I could have listened to these guys talk for hours. Highly recommend all these books. @bockino "Over/Under" @ArtManteris "Bookie" @andrewssports "Then One Life" And @chadmillman talking about his upcoming book "The Number". Thank you for letting Haden Ware sit in for Jay Cohen to discuss "Odds Man Out." And if you didn't make the panel and want a book come find @StefanPrelogNYC or go to WSEX.com to order a copy. #books #sportsbetting