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Prediction markets—platforms where users can place wagers on the outcomes of future events —are suddenly all over the news. Every day we’re seeing headlines—allegations of insider trading, states accusing prediction markets of violating gambling laws, warnings about the “depravity economy.” We’re also seeing prediction markets’ efforts at becoming part of the news ecosystem. Since November of 2025, companies such as Polymarket and Kalshi have instigated a wave of partnership deals with publishers including CNN, CNBC, Dow Jones, and Yahoo Finance—as well as Substack—enabling publishers to integrate real-time betting data into their TV and digital coverage. (Kalshi is also reportedly in advanced talks with Fox Corp.) The markets are even courting independent journalists. “Of all the tech platforms and innovations to come round in the past two decades, prediction markets have been among the first to actively, from the get go, seek partnerships with news organizations,” Nik Usher, an associate professor of communication at the University of San Diego, pointed out in a Substack post.
Are prediction markets supplemental or substitutional to news? Are they benefiting the information ecosystem at all? Polymarket and Kalshi frame their media partnerships as a boon for journalism. Polymarket has declared that “journalism is better when it’s backed by live markets.” Tarek Mansour, Kalshi CEO and cofounder, argued that partnering with his company can enable news outlets to help audiences better understand what may happen in the future. But the terms of their media deals are opaque. Beyond access to data, the value exchange—who is paying whom, how much, and for what, exactly—remains largely undisclosed. Polymarket and Kalshi did not respond to CJR’s request for comment for this piece.
What is clear is that journalism is valuable to prediction markets. Being featured in the press gives these markets visibility and, crucially, can confer legitimacy as these companies face mounting regulatory scrutiny. Prediction markets are now navigating a pivotal battle over whether they should be federally overseen as financial derivatives by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) or classified as gambling under state law—a distinction with enormous consequences for the industry. The former would likely be significantly more favorable to these companies: Brian Selig—the chair of the CFTC, confirmed in December as the sole commissioner on what is typically a five-person panel—has said that he thinks prediction markets “provide useful functions” and can “serve as an important check on our news media and our information streams.” He has made clear that he seeks to “deliver the minimum effective dose of regulation.” The Trump family’s financial entanglements heighten the stakes—Donald Trump Jr. is both an investor in and adviser to Polymarket and a paid adviser to Kalshi, and Trump Media, of which he is a director, has announced its own prediction platform, called Truth Predict.
States are pushing back. More than twenty federal lawsuits have already been filed accusing these companies of operating illegal gambling businesses, most recently by Washington State. And last week, Senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis introduced the Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act, bipartisan legislation aiming to prohibit CFTC-regulated platforms from listing sports-related contracts—a significant threat given that sports betting drives the vast majority of activity on platforms like Kalshi. “We’re not banning sports betting, we’re just simply putting it in the right places to be regulated—and one of those places is in the state,” Curtis said in an interview on CNBC. Although forty states permit sports betting in some format, others, like Utah and Hawai‘i, outlaw gambling entirely.
This desire to have access to more markets and avoid having to navigate a patchwork of state regulations may help explain the strategic logic behind media partnerships. To defend their standing as federally regulated financial platforms, these companies need a robust and visible supply of non-sports contracts, on topics like politics, economics, and culture. News organizations provide that raw material, and partnerships with established publishers serve a dual purpose: supplying the content that legitimizes platforms’ claims to federal oversight while lending them the credibility they need as scrutiny intensifies.
So what’s in it for news organizations? Critics speculate that financial pressure might be a motivating factor behind why media companies are entering partnerships with companies whose impact on their industry is questionable at best. Speaking to Nieman Lab, Danny Funt—the author of Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling, who has written about journalism and betting for CJR—drew parallels to publishers’ sports betting deals, such as ESPN’s partnership with DraftKings and the Associated Press deal with FanDuel, which were viewed by some as a “necessary evil, since their companies are fighting for survival and it’s difficult in that position to stand on principle and turn away a new, massive revenue stream.” The difference, as Usher pointed out, is that sports betting companies did not claim, as prediction markets do, to be providing information that can improve upon journalism. “MGM Grand hasn’t ever tried to claim to be providing the kind of insights as a public opinion poll,” Usher wrote.
“It started with DraftKings and FanDuel, which spent huge sums lobbying states to legalize sports betting apps,” Hanna Horvath wrote on her Substack, Your Brain on Money. “Sports leagues and media companies legitimized the whole thing because they wanted the revenue and ad dollars. Polymarket and Kalshi then took that model and removed the last guardrails—now you can bet on which countries Iran will launch missiles against on the same app where you bet on an NBA game or the Best Picture winner.”
Though the money can be useful, it’s critical to understand the normalizing effect deals like this can have for what we consider to be acceptable and lawful, apart from the significant moral hazard. Markets may offer a snapshot of public sentiment on certain topics or trends, but there’s a host of reasons why relying on them as a data source is tricky: Participants are not demographically representative, markets are vulnerable to manipulation, they financialize devastating events—inviting speculation on war, political instability, and suffering, which can undermine public trust. Furthermore, markets can only offer genuine predictive insight if participants have access to nonpublic information—a/k/a insider trading. Though some founders have at times openly embraced that idea (Polymarket’s Shane Coplan has suggested that insider trading could function as a public good by surfacing information more quickly), both companies rushed to institute new bans around the practice following the introduction of the Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act last week.
It’s essential that publishers and audiences are aware of these companies’ accelerated efforts to embed themselves in the news ecosystem—as well as the ways they contribute to misinformation, as my Tow Center colleague C.J. Robinson reported last week. Publishers should be careful not to place a bet without understanding the risks.
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