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 jurisd...