Marketing for Prediction Markets
Influencer marketing, PR and media buying, run with the contracts and disclosure process this category’s recent scandals were missing.
Prediction markets grew fast on creator marketing, and a few of the biggest names in the category just got caught doing it without proper paperwork. That’s not a reason to avoid influencer marketing here. It’s the reason to run it with an agency that already builds disclosure and compliance into regulated gambling campaigns as standard practice.
Quick answer: Uberman runs influencer marketing, PR and paid media buying for prediction market platforms, with the same contract, disclosure and review process used in regulated gambling marketing. That matters right now because several major prediction market platforms have already faced public scandals over undisclosed, poorly managed creator payments.
This isn’t two companies. It’s a real, fast-growing market.
More than a dozen federally regulated prediction market platforms now operate in the US, including Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood Predictions, ProphetX, Novig, Underdog Predict, Railbird and PredictIt, alongside event-contract products from larger brokerages. Some are divisions of companies with their own marketing teams. A meaningful number are independent platforms actively spending on media and creators.
Kalshi is estimated to have spent around $32 million on national TV advertising tied to the World Cup alone, and the wider category spent roughly $50 million on TV ads over a single year. A former Polymarket chief marketing officer said publicly that the category “would not do well without influencers,” describing creator marketing as the primary growth channel rather than a side tactic.
Sources: Sportico on World Cup prediction market ad spend, Julien Brault on Kalshi and Polymarket’s influencer-led growth model.
Federal regulators are suing states to keep this legal, not the other way around
Prediction markets sit in an unusual legal position. The platforms and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission argue that federal commodities law covers these products as swaps, which would let them operate nationwide under one federal framework rather than needing a license in every state. Several states disagree and have sent cease-and-desist orders or filed lawsuits, arguing these are unlicensed sports betting products under state gambling law.
A federal appeals court has already sided with Kalshi once, ruling that New Jersey cannot regulate its sports-related event contracts because the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction. The CFTC has separately sued Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois and Wisconsin to block their attempts to regulate these platforms, and a federal judge blocked Minnesota’s ban days before it was due to take effect. At the same time, New York’s attorney general is suing both Kalshi and Polymarket, and the underlying legal question has now reached the Supreme Court.
The specific facts above reflect where things stood at the time of writing. Given that a Supreme Court challenge is active and rulings have moved in both directions across different circuits and states, treat any market-by-market legal status as something to verify before running a campaign, not a settled fact.
Sources: The Guardian on the Third Circuit’s Kalshi ruling, AP News on the CFTC’s lawsuits against three states, CNN on the Supreme Court challenge.
Paying creators wasn’t the problem. Paying them with no paperwork was.
Politico reported that Polymarket’s chief marketing officer sent money to more than 800 creators through his own personal PayPal account over 14 months, and that creators posted about the platform on X at least 490 times during that window without disclosing they were paid. A separate Wall Street Journal investigation found creators paid $2,000 to $3,000 a month to post videos depicting wins that never happened, and asked not to disclose the arrangement. A third report described Kalshi sponsored content so lightly labeled it read as organic content at a glance.
None of these cases were caused by the basic idea of paying creators, which is normal and already priced openly on some platforms’ own rate cards. They happened because there was no documented contract, no disclosure clause, no content review step and no proper payment trail standing between the money and the post.
Regulated gambling influencer marketing runs on documented contracts, specific disclosure wording per platform, pre-publish content review, and payments through proper business accounts rather than a personal one. That’s not a new system built for this category. It’s the standard we already apply, and it directly addresses the failure pattern behind every prediction market influencer scandal so far.
Sources: Politico’s investigation into Polymarket’s influencer payments, Interconnections’ breakdown of prediction market creator economics and the WSJ findings.
The same disciplines we run for gambling, applied here
Influencer Marketing
Creator sourcing and management with a documented contract, a clear disclosure clause and a content review step before anything goes live.
PR
Trade and financial press coverage, plus the kind of cultural moment building this category already leans on heavily, run with a compliance layer underneath it.
Media Buying
Paid campaigns across the platforms covered on our paid ads and media buying page, including programmatic DSPs that already list prediction markets as a supported vertical.
Four steps, in order
Put a real contract in place first. Scope, payment terms, and disclosure requirements documented before a single creator posts anything.
Specify the disclosure wording per platform. What counts as clear and conspicuous differs between X, TikTok and YouTube, and it gets written into the brief, not left to the creator’s judgment.
Review content before it goes live. Not after a journalist or a regulator finds it first.
Pay through the business, not a personal account. A proper invoice trail is the difference between a normal marketing expense and the exact structure that made the recent scandals possible.
What platforms ask before starting
How big is the prediction market industry right now?
Large enough that Kalshi alone spent an estimated $32 million on national TV advertising around the World Cup, and the wider prediction market industry is estimated to have spent around $50 million on TV ads in a single year. A former Polymarket chief marketing officer has publicly said the category would not have grown the way it has without influencer marketing as a primary channel.
How many prediction market companies actually exist?
More than most people assume. Over a dozen federally regulated platforms operate in the US alone, including Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood Predictions, ProphetX, Novig, Underdog Predict, Railbird, PredictIt and several exchange-linked products from larger brokerages. Some of these are divisions of companies that already run their own marketing, but a meaningful number are independent platforms actively buying media and hiring creators.
Are prediction markets legal in the US?
The legal status is actively being litigated and changes by the month. The core argument, made by the CFTC and the platforms themselves, is that federal commodities law preempts state gambling law for these products, and a federal appeals court has already ruled that way once. Several states disagree and have sued or issued cease-and-desist orders. Treat any specific state-by-state status as a snapshot that needs checking, not a stable fact.
What went wrong with influencer marketing at Polymarket and Kalshi?
Not the fact that they paid creators, which is a normal, public practice in this industry. The problem was how the payments and content were managed. Politico reported that Polymarket’s chief marketing officer paid over 800 creators through a personal PayPal account with no invoices or disclosure review, and creators posted about the platform hundreds of times without disclosing they were paid. A separate Wall Street Journal investigation found creators paid to post videos depicting fabricated wins. Both cases point to the same root issue: no proper contract, disclosure clause or review workflow standing between the payment and the post.
How do you run compliant influencer marketing for a prediction market platform?
With a documented contract for every creator, a disclosure clause specifying exact wording and placement per platform, a content review step before anything goes live, and payments run through the platform’s own accounts rather than a personal payment method. This is the same infrastructure used in regulated gambling influencer marketing, applied to a category that has largely been building its creator programs without it.
Building or fixing a creator program for a prediction market?
Tell us where your current program stands. We’ll tell you honestly what’s missing, whether that’s the creator strategy itself or the contract and disclosure layer underneath it.