Kalshi Market Rules: How A 90-Cent Yes Settled No

"No where on the market rules does it say live broadcast or stream. It simply says video." That is the complaint that kept surfacing in our research on settlement disputes, and here is the direct answer: the sentence traders like him are looking for does exist on these markets. It just is not in the layer most of them read. Kalshi market rules come in three layers, and the layer most traders stop at, the one-line summary on the market card, is the least binding of the three. The expanded rules on that same market page say, in so many words, that "the live broadcast or stream will be used to resolve this event." The contract terms PDF linked below them goes further and spells out what happens when only clips surface. The trader was not wrong about what he read. He was wrong about where the rules end. This article walks through all three layers using text we pulled from Kalshi's live market data and published contract terms in August 2026, including the exact clauses that turn "he clearly said it on video" into a No settlement, and a 90-cent favorite into nothing.

The Quick Answer

The short rules blurb on a Kalshi market card is a summary, not the contract. Every market also carries expanded rules on the same page, plus a link to the full contract terms PDF, and under Kalshi's rulebook the exchange settles off its interpretation of those full terms, not the summary. The three layers, the clause that answers the "video" complaint word for word, and a worked walkthrough of a live market's rules are all below.

The Three Layers Of Kalshi Market Rules

Every Kalshi market is an event contract that pays $1.00 per contract to the correct side, and the price you pay is an implied probability: a Yes at 62 cents is the crowd calling it 62% likely, which leaves the No side at 38 cents, an implied 38%, before the exchange's bid-ask spread. What actually decides which side collects is a stack of documents, and they do not all carry the same weight.

Layer	Where it lives	What it does
The Summary	Top of the market card	One sentence: "If X happens, the market resolves to Yes"
The Expanded Rules	Same page, under the summary	Source of truth hierarchy, qualifying conditions, edge cases
The Contract Terms	A linked PDF (e.g., assets.kalshi.com/contract_terms)	The binding document; six pages of definitions for the mention family alone
The Rulebook	Kalshi's CFTC-filed exchange rules	Who interprets everything above, and how reviews work

The row that costs people money is the first one. That summary line is written to be readable, which means it is written to leave things out. On one live mention market we pulled in August 2026, the entire summary reads: "If any participating candidate says Ukraine as part of Massachusetts Democratic Senate Debate, then the market resolves to Yes." Nothing about sources. Nothing about broadcasts. Nothing about what happens if the event is closed to press. All of that lives one and two layers down, and all of it can flip the settlement.

That structure is not unique to Kalshi. Regulated exchanges all work this way: prediction markets list standardized contracts, and standardized contracts have terms. The mistake is treating the summary as the terms.

The 'Video' Complaint, Answered By The Actual Text

Go back to the quote this article opened with, because the live market above answers it almost line by line. The expanded rules on that Massachusetts debate market begin exactly the way the frustrated trader remembered: "Video of the Massachusetts Democratic Senate Debate will be primarily used to resolve the market." Stop reading there and "it simply says video" is a fair summary. Attendee clips, a campaign upload, a phone recording, all video.

Keep reading the same rules block and the picture changes. Four sentences later: "For the purpose of this market, the live broadcast or stream will be used to resolve this event." Then: "The event must be opened to the press for a live televised or streamed event to qualify." Then a line excluding "previously aired content, archival footage, and recordings captured at times, places, or events wholly separate from the featured address." And then the sentence that should end every rules skim: "Please see full rules for more details."

The full rules are the mention-family contract terms, and they close the loop the summary never opened. If an event is billed as a live stream or broadcast and that stream never happens, the terms resolve the board to a dedicated "Event does not qualify/occur" strike "regardless of if content is later uploaded." And for the exact scenario behind the complaint: "If partial snippets are released but the event is not broadcast or livestreamed, the 'Event does not qualify/occur' strike will resolve to 'Yes' and all others will resolve to 'No'." Unofficial recordings are excluded by name: "Behind-the-scenes content, rehearsals, sound checks, and unofficial recordings are NOT included unless officially broadcast or published" as part of the defined event period.

So the word "video" in the summary layer never meant "any video anywhere." It meant the qualifying broadcast the deeper layers define. That gap between what a reader assumes and what the document says is the entire subject of our standing Kalshi fine print audit, and it is rarely academic. In February 2026 it decided a board with more than $3 million on it.

When The Fine Print Decided $3 Million: The Greensboro Rally

On February 12, 2026, Bernie Sanders headlined a rally at the Carolina Theatre in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Kalshi listed a mention board on what he would say there. Yes contracts on words like "Trump" traded near 90 cents, an implied 90%, against a 10-cent No priced at an implied 10%. Traders who followed the rally insisted they heard Sanders say the words. Every word strike settled No.

The mechanism, as reported in trade-press coverage of the settlement, was the layer stack working exactly as written. The market resolved off qualifying video and transcripts from named settlement sources; Kalshi's own data for that market series lists fourteen of them, from the Associated Press and Reuters to Fox News and The New York Times. The rally reportedly ran closed to mainstream press, so no approved source produced the record the contract required, and attendee phone footage does not substitute under the terms quoted above. Burned traders alleged the settlement defied what everyone in the room heard, and that dispute is worth reading in full through our breakdown of what happens when a Kalshi market is disputed. The coverage records no argument that the contract terms themselves read differently. The fight was about traders pricing the speech at 90% while the contract was pricing the sourcing.

The same pattern runs through the most contested prediction markets: the headline question settles one way in the real world and the contract settles the other, because the contract was never asking the headline question.

Worked Example: Reading A Live Market's Rules Before You Trade

Here is the discipline applied to that same live Massachusetts debate board, open as of this writing in August 2026 for an August 20 debate, the way I read any Kalshi market before an order. It takes about four minutes.

Step 1: Read the summary as a claim, not a contract. "If any participating candidate says Ukraine... the market resolves to Yes." Fine. Now assume every load-bearing word in that sentence is defined somewhere else, because it is.

Step 2: Read the expanded rules for the three tests. Source: video of the debate first, official transcripts as fallback, live broadcast or stream required, event must be open to press. Wording: "The exact phrase/word, or a plural or possessive form of the phrase/word, must be used. Grammatical/tense inflections are otherwise not included." Timing: postponement keeps the market open only if a new date is announced by the end of the next calendar day and lands within 14 calendar days. Each test can independently turn a true event into a No.

Step 3: Open the contract terms PDF and search the scenario you are actually pricing. Say the debate happens but a candidate skips it, or the stream dies, or only clips circulate afterward. The terms have already decided each of those: partial broadcast that aired, words spoken during it count; snippets with no broadcast, the qualify strike pays and every word strike zeroes. Suppose the "Trump (5+ times)" strike gets offered at 55 cents once this board starts trading (it had not traded yet when we pulled it). At that price you are buying a 55% chance the qualifying broadcast documents it five times, not a 55% chance he simply gets named five times, and the honest fair price for the first question might be 65 cents while the second sits at 55. That is the difference between a 65% claim and a 55% claim, the 10-cent gap is the fine print, and it can be the whole edge in either direction. The No side works the same way: a No at 45 cents is a 45% position on the paperwork, not on the politician.

The same read-the-terms reflex applies before settlement, too. Contracts here settle "no later than the day after the Expiration Date" unless the outcome goes under review, so a board sitting unpaid for a day is usually normal settlement mechanics, not a dispute. And a "settled" banner with a number you did not expect deserves the same document check before you assume an error; we covered that trap in the settlement station piece.

This is also just what sharp bettors already do with sportsbook house rules, where an overtime clause or a push rule quietly changes what your ticket means. Price and terms travel together everywhere, which is why we tell readers comparing Kalshi prices to sportsbook odds to treat every number as an offer on a specific written proposition, and to shop the number itself on the live odds screen before accepting any single book's version of it.

Who Interprets The Rules When Layers Collide

One more layer sits above everything on the market page, and it decides ties. Kalshi's exchange rulebook, filed with the CFTC, states that "Kalshi has sole discretion to interpret a Contract's Terms and Conditions." If an outcome truly cannot be determined and the terms do not address the contingency, the rulebook's fallback can pay both sides off the last traded price; its own example is a contract that last traded at $0.10 paying longs 10 cents and shorts 90 cents, a 10%/90% split of the settlement dollar. Under Rule 7.1, Kalshi can also send an outcome to its Outcome Review Committee before settlement; the committee must decide "within a 24 hour period," Kalshi posts the review status on its website, and the committee's determinations "are final."

Read those provisions with the legal tone they deserve. None of that language proves any specific settlement was right or wrong, and disputes like Greensboro remain, in the traders' framing, allegations that the exchange read its own documents too narrowly. It does tell you where the authority sits. The summary persuades, the expanded rules constrain, the contract terms govern, and the exchange interprets. A thesis that only survives layer one usually dies somewhere in layer three, at a settlement you have not read yet.

Kalshi Market Rules FAQ

Where do I find the full contract terms for a Kalshi market? On the market page, under the Rules section, follow the full rules link; the documents live at assets.kalshi.com under contract_terms as PDFs per market family. The rulebook itself is on Kalshi's regulatory page and in its CFTC filings.

Does the market summary ever override the full terms? No. That blurb is a plain-language description of the contract. Settlement runs on the contract terms as interpreted by the exchange under its rulebook, which is why reading only the card summary is the classic mistake in these markets.

What should I check before buying any Kalshi contract? Three things from the deeper layers: the source that documents the outcome, the exact wording test the outcome must pass, and the timing rules for cancellation or postponement. Then ask whether the price reflects the contract's question or the headline's question; at 97 cents the market is saying 97%, and fine print risk is precisely the kind of thing a 3-cent, 3% No side sometimes knows.

The Rules You Skim Are Not The Rules You Trade

The trader quoted at the top of this piece deserves a straight closing answer, so here it is. The sentence he described exists on real mention markets, and it really does say video. Those markets still settle off a different sentence, two layers down, that most of the crowd never prices. None of this is a reason to avoid these markets. Careful readers hold an edge in them for exactly this reason: every gap between what the crowd assumes and what the document says is mispricing, and unlike a bad beat, this edge is printed in advance and free to read. Our weekly fine print audit grades live markets on exactly these gaps, and if you want the same rules-first discipline applied to conventional betting markets, start with our free expert picks and read every ticket the way Kalshi reads a contract: terms first, price second, story last.