Polymarket’s Next Bet? It Can Also Be a Media Company | WIRED

Overview

Polymarket’s Next Bet? It Can Also Be a Media Company

The industry is currently embroiled in a series of legal battles over whether prediction markets are financial services (the view held by the markets and the federal government) or gambling platforms (the position of many state authorities and regulators). The fight over what kind of companies these are could end up in the Supreme Court, but in the meantime, both Polymarket and its even-more-popular archrival, Kalshi, have successfully positioned themselves as new media organizations too. For two companies associated with risk, it’s a notably old-school hedge.

Details

All kinds of tech startups have launched editorial projects—did you know the alternative dating app Feeld has a surprisingly good magazine?—but the leading prediction markets are entrenching themselves into the mainstream media apparatus in a particularly aggressive way. A recent report noted that they’re integrated into a quarter of the top 20 companies listed in the S&P 500’s Communications Services sector. Polymarket has partnerships with Dow Jones and Substack, while Kalshi has deals with CNN, CNBC, and Fox Corp.

None of the agreements facilitate trading. Instead, they’re mainly about data sharing; news outlets want to know what people are putting their money on, and prediction markets are happy to oblige. The deals showcase prediction markets as information channels—places to go to find out about what’s happening. They’ve given Polymarket and Kalshi much-needed boosts in credibility and offered a straightforward introduction to the wider public. Prediction market boosters hype these products as “truth machines,” revealing public sentiment more accurately than polling or traditional reporting; when media outlets decide the odds themselves are newsworthy, they reinforce that message.

“Given the forecasting success of the markets, it's clear there is informational value,” says Kalshi spokesperson Jack Such. “And three out of four users don't trade, which suggests the informational use case is popular enough to be taken very seriously.” (Polymarket declined to comment.)

Providing data is only a small part of how these companies function as new media entities. On social media, their official accounts post like news outlets, adopting a vernacular that mashes up Pop Crave’s frenzied sensibility with Bloomberg’s coverage areas. (The efforts haven’t been wholly reliable: A New York Times analysis earlier this year found that Polymarket’s newsy social accounts have published “false and misleading information.”)

Kalshi is less inclined to describe itself this way. When asked if it considered itself a media company, Such, the spokesperson, tells WIRED that it does not, though the markets themselves have “quasi-media” attributes because they follow the news. “We see ourselves as a financial exchange,” he says.

Sure. But why not both? Financial services companies have jumped into the media sector before, most obviously Bloomberg, which initially focused on providing market data and financial analytics before expanding to include journalism products. More recently, the online trading hub Robinhood—now also a Polymarket competitor with its own prediction market offerings—ran a media subsidiary called Sherwood before winding it down earlier this summer. Then there’s Hunterbook, which operates both an investigative outlet called Hunterbook News and a hedge fund that executes trades based on its outlet’s investigations.

Polymarket doesn’t have a dedicated subsidiary or editorial arm. But it has launched a weekly podcast called What Are the Odds? in partnership with the podcast network Dear Media. It stars a rotating cast of hosts known for celebrity news content, including podcasters and cocktail entrepreneurs Claudia and Jackie Oshry, the daughters of a prominent anti-Muslim activist.

It has also partnered with a prediction-markets-focused media startup called Eventual, which raised money from venture capital firms like Lightshed Capital as well as serial media entrepreneur and Bustle Digital Group owner Bryan Goldberg, who was also an early investor in Polymarket itself. “Polymarket's role in shaping media narratives was always a big piece of the puzzle,” Goldberg, who is best known for operating 2010s media brands like Bustle and Elite Daily, tells WIRED.

Much like those two digital media companies once did, Polymarket has put its own spin on engagement via rage-baiting. What’s the 2026 version of an ill-advised xo Jane personal essay riling up Twitter? It looks an awful lot like the podcaster Amanda Hirsch getting eviscerated on Tik Tok for creating paid content for Polymarket promoting how people could wager on the outcome of the Lindsay Clancy trial. The backlash was severe enough that Hirsch, who is another one of the What Are the Odds? hosts, apologized.

There are obvious advantages to these companies going all-in on media strategy. For starters, it turbocharges brand awareness, doubling as marketing. For companies that like to talk about how they might be used to protect investments, creating a potential revenue generator separate from trading fees is itself a way to diversify risk. It also helps the markets shape their own narratives.

In a January 2026 announcement about its decision to partner with Polymarket, Wall Street Journal publisher and Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour described the prediction market as a “rapidly growing source of real-time insight into collective beliefs about future events.” It did not mention that the company’s flagship product remains banned in the US. (Polymarket now has an app that is federally regulated in the United States called Polymarket US, though it offers a narrower range of markets than its original decentralized product.)

Not every media outlet is embracing these markets as a potential partner or peer. The New York Times recently scuttled a potential partnership between Kalshi and its sports-focused subsidiary, The Athletic, after pushback from its union.

Still, things aren’t slowing down. Earlier this month, Polymarket launched a group-chat feature called Squads, with the idea that people wagering on its platforms want to socialize and strategize together. The recognition goes both ways. As NPR first reported, Meta considered buying Kalshi and later discussed launching its own internal prediction market. The social media juggernaut sniffing around the prediction market space isn’t an indication that the company is hungry to get into trading or gambling—it’s more evidence that this is part of the future of media. Meta, despite its best efforts, remains a digital media company, and it’s savvy enough to see that these markets are increasingly part of how people use the internet.

As these companies keep expanding their reach, their media maneuvers will only grow more important. There may well be other efforts to refine editorial products in the near future, even a renewed attempt to hire journalists.

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Key Takeaways

Polymarket’s Next Bet
The industry is currently embroiled in a series of legal battles over whether prediction markets are financial services (the view held by the markets and the federal government) or gambling platforms (the position of many state authorities and regulators)
All kinds of tech startups have launched editorial projects—did you know the alternative dating app Feeld has a surprisingly good magazine
None of the agreements facilitate trading
“Given the forecasting success of the markets, it's clear there is informational value,” says Kalshi spokesperson Jack Such