Two of the largest prediction-market companies launched flagship advertising campaigns within a day of each other in September, both timed to the NFL season opener, both fronted by celebrities. On 9 September, Novig released a video of actor Sydney Sweeney appearing nearly nude to promote its sports-only platform. A day earlier, Polymarket released a football-season commercial starring LeBron James, Eli Manning, Derek Jeter, Spike Lee and Emily Ratajkowski. The reaction to both was immediate, and mostly about what the advertising was doing rather than who is allowed to run it.
The campaigns are calibrated to the sports calendar because that is where the volume is. Sports contracts are the bulk of activity on the largest platforms, and Kalshi and Polymarket — each valued at roughly $20bn — have both spent heavily recruiting celebrities, timing the spending to the start of seasons. Kalshi’s World Cup advertising used Argentina captain Lionel Messi alongside Nicolás Otamendi and Rodrigo De Paul through a commercial partnership with Argentina’s football federation, with a separate campaign built around Croatia captain Luka Modrić. Before that, Timothée Chalamet appeared in ads set in a dentist’s office and a music store. Advertising on this rhythm is not a product launch; it is a purchase of attention in the weeks when the sports audience is largest and most engaged.
The court fight the ads talk around
The growth is happening while the legal status of the product is unresolved. In August, the Ninth Circuit ruled that Nevada could enforce its gambling laws against Kalshi’s sports-event contracts, rejecting the company’s argument that federal commodities law preempts state oversight. With appellate courts now divided on whether sports-related contracts are federally regulated financial products or gambling under state law, the dispute could reach the Supreme Court as early as next year.
Campaigns built around a LeBron James spot, a World Cup federation partnership or an actor with film credits make one version of the sector’s argument outside the courtroom: that these contracts belong to sports fandom rather than to gambling regulation. The same question is being litigated state by state, where attorneys general have argued that event contracts are betting in poor costume.
What the campaigns do not carry
The reported reaction concerned taste, the selling of bodies and the reputations of the athletes involved. “Selling gambling by selling sex,” read one widely shared reply to Novig’s video; “Damn, I can’t believe LeBron is a sellout now,” read a reply to Polymarket’s.
What the coverage does not carry is the cost side. No problem-gambling prevalence figure, helpline volume or treatment-funding number appears alongside the campaign spending, and none of the sums involved are presented as anything other than the price of growth. Acquisition is where the sector’s market is being won; advertising is where its costs are being acquired. Only the first half of that transaction is reported as news.