Blanche Lincoln lobbies for Kalshi after seeking curbs on sports event contracts

Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who helped craft federal authority intended to curb gambling-like event contracts, has become a lobbyist for Kalshi, the prediction-market platform seeking looser treatment of sports contracts. The Lincoln Policy Group, the firm she founded, has received $480,000 from Kalshi since 2024 for lobbying Congress and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The shift reverses Lincoln’s position during the 2010 debate over the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. As chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee and a principal author of Title VII, she warned that contracts based on events such as the Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby and Masters would have no genuine commercial purpose and would be used solely for gambling.

Lincoln said at the time that the CFTC needed authority to prevent derivatives contracts contrary to the public interest when they existed predominantly to enable gambling through purported event contracts. Congress did not directly outlaw such contracts, instead giving the executive branch discretion over them.

Dodd-Frank section 745(b) added a Commodity Exchange Act provision authorising the CFTC to prohibit specified event contracts contrary to the public interest. The agency implemented that authority through Rule 40.11 in 2011, barring CFTC-registered entities from listing contracts involving gaming, terrorism, assassination, war or unlawful activity, subject to the commission’s discretion.

Lincoln’s firm has since urged a markedly different policy course. In a July 10, 2025 letter to the CFTC, Lincoln argued that prediction markets fell entirely within the commission’s jurisdiction and that states should not interfere. She said restrictions by states could destabilise the $60 trillion derivatives market regulated by the agency and maintained that major sporting events carried commercial value through advertising, apparel and hospitality.

The firm says it supports strong federal CFTC oversight to establish guardrails, prevent market abuse and protect consumers. Its position also argues that closing regulated US markets could direct traders to offshore platforms without comparable rules or oversight.

The dispute has intensified as Kalshi expanded into sports contracts. The company began offering sports bets on Jan. 23, 2025, and Lincoln subsequently urged the CFTC to permit sports-event contracts. After beginning work for Kalshi, she also opposed a Biden-era proposal to ban additional categories of event contracts, including election wagers, although an August 2024 letter said sports outcomes lacked the significant economic consequences needed to qualify as suitable event contracts.

The Biden-era CFTC treated sports contracts as prohibited under Rule 40.11. The second Trump administration stopped enforcing the rule against such contracts, allowing them to expand nationally without formally repealing it, according to Ars Technica.

Regulatory uncertainty remains. The CFTC’s June 2024 proposal sought to clarify that gaming-related event contracts contrary to the public interest could not be listed or cleared by registered entities, and the commission reported a significant rise in both the number and variety of event contracts since 2021. It proposed further changes to Rule 40.11 in June, and that proposal remained pending.

About 20 states have filed suits over whether they may restrict or prohibit prediction-market betting. Those cases form part of the broader conflict over whether federal derivatives oversight displaces state gambling law, with the litigation potentially reaching the Supreme Court.