Prediction Markets and Gambling Platforms Invade Newsrooms and Advertising Pipelines

14 October 2026

Gambling and prediction markets are moving in on the news and advertising businesses with vigor, as platforms that until recently existed on the fringes now win partnerships with major outlets, share newsroom lines, and claim key spots in their advertising budgets.

Kalshi has landed partnerships with A.P. and main outlets, and Polymarket has reached deals with Substack and Dow Jones. Polymarket has increasingly styled its social media and e-newsletters from a betting platform into something closer to news products, with language like "BREAKING" in tweets linking to wagering markets. Polymarket and Kalshi are not alone. The investment firm Aventure estimates that 75% of the top 20 publicly traded companies in the S&P 500 Communications Services sector have integrated prediction markets to some extent into their business models.

Media companies' willingness to enter the gambling mainstream corresponds to a surge in the industry's spending power. Gambling.com Group, a specialist affiliate-marketing platform, reported a 54.1% compound annual growth rate in revenues over the last five years and, in 2023, took in 61% of its revenue from the North American market. Additionally, investment firm Vidette's analysis shows the company has shifted heavily toward content marketing, SEO, and media partnerships designed to offer an editorial-style betting experience to attract gamblers. Even the Independent newspaper, which once avoided gambling ads, now operates a multi-year editorial partnership with Gambling.com featuring betting content.

Research from Bristol Social Media Database found that only 19% of gambling-related ads sampled were paid placements on Instagram and Facebook, with the rest consisting of organic posts across Instagram, X, and TikTok. MediaRadar data shows this broad distribution matches the wider gambling and sports advertising landscape — with $183 million of the $734.8 million spent on digital display ads in mid-2023 flowing to Google, Facebook, and The Washington Post. Google's share of that ad spend, $188.9 million, rose 33% year over year.

Independent publishers unaffiliated with major media conglomerates have been the quickest to forge ties with gambling brands. A Routledge Journal of Journalism Research study indicated about half of U.K. gambling market newsrooms had secured platform deals.

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Transparency Concerns Mount

Researchers warn these partnerships risk undermining journalistic transparency. Major deals like Polymarket's with CNN, CNBC, and Fox News, or Kalshi's with A.P., increasingly blur the line between news and betting. Media companies integrating prediction-market platforms into newsroom workflows risk turning content production over to betting platforms rather than news brands. These markets, originally confined to gaming sites, have gained credibility through forecasting accuracy—making media partnerships more lucrative. Bristol's research found 52% of gambling-related social media content consisted of branded campaigns and influencer posts, with traditional display ads making up the remainder.

"This leads to the de-professionalization of journalism," says Charlotte Doyle, a University of Bristol social media researcher familiar with the platforms. "News organizations' missions become secondary to platform goals like audience growth and forecasting accuracy. We see more consumer-focused tools and templated content in exchange for enabling that growth."

The encroachment of prediction markets and online gambling into news and sports highlights both traditional media's monetization struggles and gambling's adaptability in exploiting them.