Every day, a newsletter from the prediction market Polymarket hits my inbox with a subject line that could easily come from any number of politics-focused newspapers or magazines. Recent entries include “Houthis Reveal New Precision Strike Capabilities,” “BREAKING: Trump Unveils Green Energy Beam,” and “World War I, 2.0?”
These dispatches are roundups with breathless summaries of the day’s top stories, linking out to corresponding Polymarket markets—yes, this thing will happen; no, it won’t. As far as business news analysis goes, the newsletter is not exactly Bloomberg’s Money Stuff, or even Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me—but it’s recognizably a commercial editorial product, and one that plays an important role in the prediction market ecosystem.
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.
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 PopCrave’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.”)
Chief executive and founder Shayne Coplan has referred to the company’s partnership with X as “News 2.0.” In 2024, the company hinted at even more expansive ambitions, recruiting for an editor in chief role to lead “content and data journalism” efforts. It never made that hire, although political analyst and media founder Nate Silver came on later that year as an adviser. But on its careers page, the company beckons prospective employees by playing this angle up: “Become the new front page of the internet.”
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.