Blanche Lincoln, who warned about sports event contracts, now lobbies for Kalshi

In 2010, Senator Blanche Lincoln stood on the Senate floor and warned that prediction markets could become a backdoor for sports gambling. Fifteen years later, she is being paid to help one of them keep that door open.

Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat who helped write the law that now governs prediction markets, has registered as a lobbyist for Kalshi. Her current pitch to federal regulators reads very differently from her original one.

From warning to advocacy

The original warning came in July 2010, during Senate debate over the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Lincoln argued that poorly regulated prediction markets could sidestep gambling laws by dressing up wagers as “event contracts.”

She even listed examples. The Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and the Masters golf tournament were all, in her view, easy targets for this kind of product.

“These types of contracts would not serve any real commercial purpose. Rather, they would be used solely for gambling,” Lincoln told her Senate colleagues.

In July 2025, Lincoln’s firm, Lincoln Policy Group, filed comments with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The filing urged the agency to assert exclusive jurisdiction over all prediction markets, sports-event contracts included.

Her argument this time leaned heavily on commerce. Lincoln pointed to the ways these contracts touch advertising, merchandise sales and hospitality. She also warned that leaving oversight to individual states would produce a chaotic patchwork for businesses in the sector.

The money and the market

Lincoln registered as a lobbyist for Kalshi in 2024. Her firm received $180,000 from the company that year for lobbying on event contract regulation.

She has also backed Kalshi in court. Lincoln supported the company through an amicus brief filed with the Third Circuit, part of a broader fight over whether states can police Kalshi’s sports products.

Sports contracts made up an estimated 77% of the platform’s trading volume in early 2025. That share reportedly climbed to between 80% and 90% later in the year.

Kalshi operates as a CFTC-designated market. That federal status sits at the heart of its legal strategy. If sports event contracts count as federally regulated derivatives, the company argues, state gambling laws should not apply to them.

A split in the courts

The Third Circuit has sided with Kalshi on the question of federal preemption, accepting the idea that federal commodities law can override state rules in this area.

The Sixth and Ninth Circuits went the other way and ruled against the company. Those decisions leave room for states to treat the contracts as gambling subject to local regulation.

Lincoln’s CFTC comments effectively ask the federal regulator to step in and resolve the confusion in Kalshi’s favor, by declaring the whole field its territory.

Background: the law she helped write

Dodd-Frank reshaped US financial regulation after the 2008 crisis. Among many other things, it set the framework the CFTC uses to oversee event contracts today.

Lincoln played a central role in crafting that law. Her 2010 remarks were not a stray comment from the back bench. They came from one of the people writing the rules, explaining what those rules were supposed to prevent.

When a law’s author argues for a reading that contradicts her own floor statements, opponents in court and in state capitals have ready-made material to quote back at her.

What this means

For Kalshi, Lincoln’s involvement carries an obvious upside. A Dodd-Frank architect arguing for federal oversight lends weight to the company’s claim that Congress intended the CFTC to govern these products.

State regulators and opposing lawyers can point to her 2010 warnings as evidence of what Congress originally feared. Her own words describe the exact products now driving most of Kalshi’s volume.

Traditional sportsbooks and state gaming regulators are also watching closely. A federally regulated product that functions like a sports bet could reach customers in states where conventional betting is limited or banned.

The key things to watch are how the CFTC responds to comments like Lincoln’s, and whether more circuits weigh in on preemption.