The prediction-market industry has had a rough month in court, but it is playing a second game, one it is far better positioned to win. A new tally from OpenSecrets, reported on September 30, 2026, finds that Kalshi, Polymarket, and the industry's Coalition for Prediction Markets have spent at least $3 million on lobbying and campaign contributions across federal and state levels this year. The most striking figure is the footprint: as of September, Kalshi had at least one registered lobbyist in 41 states, and nearly all of them were brought on since April, right as the wave of state enforcement began.
That timing is the story. The legal news for Kalshi has been bad and getting worse: the Ninth Circuit ruled against it in August, the Sixth Circuit followed in September, and state attorneys general from Missouri to Massachusetts have moved to treat its sports event contracts as unlicensed betting. As the courtroom losses pile up, the company is building the kind of state-by-state political operation that the established sportsbook industry spent years assembling.
The state blitz
The spending is concentrated where the fights are. In California, Kalshi reported about $62,000 on lobbying in the first half of 2026, working three assembly bills and engaging the governor's and attorney general's offices. In New York, it increased a monthly retainer with one firm from $10,000 to $25,000 and signed another at $25,000 a month through July 2027, with projected New York spending alone topping $400,000 over that window. A 41-state lobbyist roster assembled in a matter of months is not a defensive crouch; it is a company preparing to argue its case in every legislature that might regulate it.
Money in the AG races
The campaign contributions are the part worth watching closely, because of who is receiving them. Kalshi has given to a super PAC supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's Senate run and to the campaigns of Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. State attorneys general are precisely the officials who decide whether to send a cease-and-desist letter or file suit against a prediction-market platform, the way Missouri's did to six companies this month. We draw no conclusion about any individual official from a campaign check, but the pattern, money flowing to the enforcers, is exactly the kind of thing voters and reporters tend to scrutinize.
The mirror image of the sportsbook playbook
None of this is new to anyone who has watched the licensed sportsbook industry. DraftKings, FanDuel, Fanatics, and bet365 have poured money into ballot campaigns and candidate races for years, including the roughly $10 million super PAC effort around Georgia legalization and the multimillion-dollar petition drive behind Nebraska's 2026 ballot measure. What is new is that the prediction-market platforms, which market themselves as a federally regulated alternative to all of that, are now running the same plays. The federal government is on their side for the moment: the CFTC has sued several states to defend the platforms. But the platforms are clearly not betting everything on Washington.
Our take
Follow the money and you learn how the industry itself reads the odds. If Kalshi believed the courts would hand it a clean national win, it would not need lobbyists in 41 states and checks in four attorney-general races. The spending is a hedge against exactly the outcome the Ninth and Sixth Circuits have started to deliver, a future where prediction markets are regulated state by state like the sportsbooks they compete with. For bettors, the takeaway is simple: these platforms are not neutral technology, they are well-funded operators spending heavily to shape the rules they operate under, and that is worth remembering whether you use them or not. We cover prediction markets as what they are, a fast-growing product on unsettled legal ground, and not as a substitute for a licensed sportsbook.