Polymarket and Kalshi are turning TV programming into one big casino

When entertainment enthusiasts tune into TV and movie awards shows, there’s no way to tell who might take home the biggest prizes of the night. But during this year’s Golden Globes red-carpet preshow, hosted by Variety, Timothée Chalamet’s best actor award was essentially spoiled hours before the official Timmy win was announced. Other categories, like Best Original Song and the newly added Best Podcast, also got the spoiler treatment on the official broadcast before the hardware was handed over.

It was all thanks to Polymarket, the prediction market platform whose partnership with the Globes manifested as onscreen graphics displaying real-time odds from the platform for several awards categories throughout the night. In most cases (26 out of 28, to be exact), the odds correctly predicted the eventual winner.

That was just the beginning for prediction market brands’ push into the entertainment and media world. Since the Globes, Polymarket has shown up at South by Southwest as part of an event for Hulu and Alex Cooper’s beverage brand Unwell and has established partnerships with Substack, Dow Jones, and various pro sports leagues. Meanwhile, its competitor, Kalshi, has inked deals with CNN, CNBC, and Fox to show up as part of news coverage. These arrangements could mean a boost for media brands’ engagement as it also legitimizes the prediction platforms’ own brands—but it could also present more existential dilemmas, according to Olivier Toubia, Glaubinger Professor of Business, marketing division, at Columbia Business School.

“In terms of public events and political events, I think it becomes a bit scary, and there also is maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Toubia told Marketing Brew. “The prediction becomes the leading carrier of the truth, and then these markets, instead of just creating events, they actually influence events.”

Big leagues

Polymarket and Kalshi are, importantly, prediction markets—a distinction that prevents them, at least for now, from falling under certain federal and state laws regulating gambling platforms. After coming to fame first in the political junkie world and in the sports betting community, they’re moving in on entertainment as a way to further legitimize their own brands, Toubia said. He views the Globes as a “big victory” in integrating Polymarket into more traditional channels.

Shayne Coplan, Polymarket’s CEO, would agree (although a Polymarket spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for interviews). After the awards show, Coplan called the Globes partnership “the single most mainstream prediction market integration to date” in a post on X. Not everyone agreed. “‘The Golden Globes Best Podcast odds presented by Polymarket’ is a new low for this humiliating awards show,” Semafor’s Josh Billinson put it.

Why would the Globes strike a partnership that would inspire anyone to decry its low-ness? In a word, engagement. Big-and-little-screen culture has come for us all, and prediction markets can offer one way to keep audiences interacting with media brands’ content even when they want to look away.

Jack Rousseau, founder and CEO of Rex Entertainment, an entertainment discovery app, sees a future where prediction market–supported entertainment might find its footing with more subtle integrations.

“People can be wary of the overt commercialization,” Rousseau told us. “My hope is that we find a perfect medium where it’s not overboard, but you still have people enticed and excited about different awards.”

In the meantime, integrations like the Globes partnership may simply meet audiences where they’re at, according to Toubia.

“Viewers are expecting live experiences [similar] to social media,” Toubia said. “With something like the Golden Globes integration, you have a TV experience which is at the same time a massive event with high production value, kind of giving the best of the traditional TV experience, but at the same time, getting the best of the kind of social media world: live, exciting, tip the scale in one way or the other, aggregating input from the crowd, letting trends emerge.”

Casino royale

Placing bets on awards show outcomes or news stories offers another way to gamify the media experience, an engagement strategy that’s been increasing in popularity, at least on the ad side, since at least 2024. Games are an important engagement strategy and product offering for Peacock and NBCUniversal, according to Kimberly Francella-Faver, SVP of marketing and brand partnerships at NBCU, and she’s keeping an eye on how prediction market brands can support continued growth for sports, news, and entertainment. In December, CNBC and Kalshi announced a multiyear, exclusive partnership that brings Kalshi’s real-time prediction data into CNBC’s programming across its TV, digital, and subscription channels.

“I’d love to see [prediction markets] show up in some of our entertainment shows,” Francella-Faver told us. “I think it would be super cool to think about predictions on [a Real Housewives] reunion seating chart.”

Some in entertainment see Polymarket and Kalshi’s involvement as a marketing vehicle for movies and TV shows themselves. Rousseau said he is wary of the prediction markets’ growing presence in various facets of life, but said that if an increased Polymarket or Kalshi presence ups viewers and engagement, it could be worth it.

“You’re probably gonna have people go and watch everything so they can say, ‘I think Amy Madigan is gonna win for Weapons, Best Supporting Actress,’ or, ‘I think Paul Thomas Anderson is gonna win for Best Director,’” Rousseau said. “I think it’s fun. I think it will create a lot more buzz.”

Ethics, schmethics?

If all parties stand to benefit, why not strike up a deal? If these companies have money to spend on ad partnerships and integrations—which, according to data from iSpot, includes $17.7 million spent by Kalshi on national linear TV ads since September—entertainment brands should be lapping it up…right?

Toubia said it’s not that simple, noting that brands could stand to get tied into larger ethical questions that prediction markets pose.

“Monetizing events in the world has some ethical ramifications,” Toubia said, noting that while there might be a public and business value in the markets, there can be “sometimes unexpected implications.”

He continued: “I think it’s worth keeping an eye on that and making sure that there’s no negative consequence on political health [and] mental health.”

While having money where your mouth is could create a more authentic engagement experience for brands partnering with prediction markets, Toubia said media and brand partners have a responsibility to consider these issues—if not for ethical purposes, then at least to protect their own businesses.

“If the negative [societal] outcomes do happen, I think they would pay the price also,” Toubia said. “How can we expect firms to care about more than their profits? But we would like to think that they also think about the welfare of their users and the public, and in that case, they will have responsibility.”