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In the past few months, Polymarket—a popular platform where users can bet on the outcomes of everything from sports to elections and even wars—has been courting relationships with news organizations. In the past year, Polymarket and sites like it have announced partnerships with CNN, CNBC, Dow Jones, and Yahoo Finance, as well as the platform Substack. They’ve even approached independent journalists for partnership deals, according to The Verge. The connections to journalism are part of the gambling platforms’ push to be seen as legitimate sources of meaningful real-time information about events in the world, but a New York Times analysis published last week found that Polymarket’s X account contained hundreds of false and misleading posts.
An analysis by the Tow Center shows that Polymarket’s influence on X may spread far beyond its own account. The Tow Center identified at least eleven X accounts that have words like “news” or “updates” in their bios and were either listed as Polymarket affiliates on X or otherwise referenced working with the company. Many of these accounts, like @NewsWire_US and @unusual_whales, have posted claims that lack context and validity or were outright false.
Most accounts sport a Polymarket or PolymarketMoney “badge” from X, which requires explicit invitation from the official account. Some accounts, like @unusual_whales, don’t have a badge but claim to be a Polymarket partner. The posts they publish are often short and inflammatory, and aren’t based on their own original reporting. They may or may not mention the news organization from which they sourced the claims, and almost never include the event date. Posts are “BREAKING” or “NEW” even if they rely on outdated reports. Collectively, these accounts attract over three times as many impressions as the official Polymarket account.
But it’s not just accounts that have the Polymarket badge or state an affiliation in the bio that seem to have partnered with the company. Polymarket also seems to have established affiliations with journalists and influencers on the platform for individual posts. The Tow Center found quoted posts and screenshots of Polymarket odds by big-name accounts such as those belonging to Piers Morgan and Laura Loomer, which are marked by a “paid partnership” badge. Although X recently announced that accounts have to disclose paid partnerships with a small label attached to the posts, accounts have to self-report at the time of posting, and the platform does not publish information about which company a user partnered with.
It’s unclear exactly what each of these partnerships means in practice. Accounts could be receiving money directly from Polymarket or via affiliate links, or have no financial ties whatsoever. A representative from Polymarket confirmed receipt of questions from the Tow Center but did not respond. Whatever the exact nature of these affiliations, betting markets appear to be attempting to influence how people get news on a platform abandoned by many journalists who once used it to share original scoops and real-time reporting.
Quoted posts of popular Polymarket alerts reveal dozens of such paid partnerships. In addition to Loomer and Morgan, accounts that posted using the sponsored flag included popular general-interest accounts @PopBase, @sentdefender, and @zerohedge and partisan media figures from across the political spectrum, such as Turning Point USA contributor Savanah Hernandez and liberal political commentator Harry Sisson. Nikita Bier, head of product at X, appeared to poke fun at the influence of betting markets on the platform during the launch of the feature and previously alluded to his unhappiness with “undisclosed prediction market shills and AI slop.”
Many of these accounts with sponsored posts deliver news with a right-wing slant. @LeadingReport links to a site in its bio that has been redesigned in the past year from a conservative news outlet to an endless scroll of stories tied to Polymarket events. The stories have no individual bylines, and several are marked as completely AI-generated according to the AI detector platform Pangram. The founder of Leading Report, Jacob Cabe, regularly reposts from accounts supporting Donald Trump and has repeatedly amplified false information. Other accounts with paid partnerships, like @RedLineNewsUSA and @Breaking911, often post commentary supporting conservative talking points. The LeadingReport account did not respond to questions from the Tow Center.
Kalshi—another betting market—is pursuing similar “paid partnership” opportunities with accounts that post news updates, like @BNONews and @WhaleInsider, according to a spokesperson from the company. The official Kalshi account also posts news alerts. But Kalshi abandoned its official affiliate badges in February when X updated its promotional policy, and the spokesperson said Kalshi hopes to remain cautious with badges to “make sure that we’re not in any way associated with something that might move a market, with regulations.” Polymarket, on the other hand, has leaned into giving third-party accounts affiliation badges and has become X’s “official prediction market partner.”
Polymarket has also found reach by scooping up accounts that already had followers. Some of the officially affiliated accounts have been posting for years, but have changed names after becoming affiliated with Polymarket. For instance, an account called @UAWeapons, which posted updates on the Ukrainian war, changed its name after the old account said in its bio that it was “sold and renamed to @PolymarketIntel.” Other accounts appear to have been spun up with Polymarket in their names when they were created.
The accounts are very effective at driving engagement. Many regularly reach a number of users that dwarfs their follower counts. @NewsWire_US, which says it’s powered by Polymarket, churns out hit posts, reaching an average of over two hundred million impressions per month, according to an analysis of data from social media tracking organization Junkipedia.
One of NewsWire’s most viral posts, which misleadingly claimed that Trump was considering eliminating NASA, garnered over twenty million impressions. The same claim was posted by @LeadingReport. Although the administration proposed deep cuts to the agency, there were no reports of its full elimination.
A post by @unusual_whales, meanwhile, claimed that “Over 70% of licensed Realtors didn’t sell a single home last year, per NAR.” The false claim gained over five million impressions, even though it misattributed the statistic to a report showing that only 5 percent of active realtors had zero transactions. False claims were not necessarily tied to any particular wager.
If markets both control the betting systems themselves and have influence over the information that may move them, they’re entering a dangerous, closed system, one where the markets are “cosplaying as news,” as Elizabeth Lopatto recently wrote for The Verge. Leaving the power of disseminating news to betting markets, especially when they lack transparency, can only decrease confidence in the information ecosystem.
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