A former Arkansas senator who beforehand helped creator laws to crack down on prediction markets is now a lobbyist for Kalshi.
The main prediction market agency has paid Democrat Blanche Lincoln $480,000 since 2024, in response to the New York Post. The funds got here shortly after the senator voiced her staunch opposition to sporting occasion contracts whereas in workplace. She argued that buying and selling a majority of these markets provided no reputable monetary reasoning.
Lincoln served because the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee in 2010 and helped write provisions of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Those sections gave the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) the ability to bar sure occasion contracts, together with on sporting occasions just like the Super Bowl and Kentucky Derby.
“These types of contracts would not serve any real commercial purpose,” Lincoln mentioned on the time. “Rather, they would be used solely for gambling.”
Change Of Opinion?
Prediction markets have grown in recognition since Kalshi started providing sports activities occasion contracts in 2025. That has led to vital authorized wrangling with state gaming regulators and tribal teams alleging that the businesses violate state gaming legal guidelines.
Prediction markets argue that their choices are completely different from conventional sports activities betting and solely regulated by the CFTC. Kalshi has been particularly lively in suing states to dam state-level regulatory efforts.
The CFTC has additionally sued the state of New York in addition to a number of others to dam these efforts and to reassert the fee’s energy to control the trade.
According to the Post, Lincoln’s lobbying agency, Lincoln Policy Group, started working for Kalshi earlier than the corporate started providing sports activities markets. The former senator, who served within the Senate from 1999 to 2011, now favors federal management over prediction markets and opposed state efforts to control the trade.
No Commercial Value
In feedback to the fee, she mentioned contracts on sports activities “have strong commercial value because they have major impacts on advertising, apparel sales, and the hospitality industry, to name a few.”
Additionally, Lincoln urged the CFTC to permit market forces to find out which forms of occasion contracts maintain worth with customers. That’s a major about-face from her earlier views on the trade.
In August 2024, Lincoln favored the Biden administration’s efforts to restrict occasion contract buying and selling, together with on sports activities. Lincoln Policy Group defended the agency’s namesake’s obvious shift in coverage views and mentioned shopper safeguards had been in place to guard the general public.
“The firm’s current work reflects her view that properly regulated prediction markets can serve legitimate financial purposes, including contracts on sporting event outcomes, which are increasingly economically significant to a variety of stakeholders,” the lobbying agency advised Ars Technica.
