Polymarket announced a partnership with social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on June 6. The company has become the official prediction market partner of X, though the timing of the deal’s announcement during the public fallout between X owner Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump has raised some eyebrows.
Terms of the deal have not been fully disclosed but its general objectives have been announced. The duo will work on an integrated product which will provide Polymarket with X data for live insights, real-time annotations derived from X’s Grok AI chatbot, and relevant X posts.
“Combining Polymarket’s accurate, unbiased, and real-time prediction market probabilities with Grok’s analysis and X’s real time insights will enable us to provide contextualised, data-driven insights to millions of Polymarket users around the world instantaneously,” said Shayne Coplan, Founder and CEO of Polymarket.
Prediction markets have been shaping the landscape of US betting in recent months. However, it is not Polymarket that has led this charge but instead Kalshi – in fact, Polymarket has blocked US customers since 2022 after a regulatory spat with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Kalshi has commanded headlines lately due to the firm’s own widely covered regulatory battles with the CFTC. Much of this focused on the firm’s ‘politics events contracts’ product, which allowed users to bet on the outcomes of political events like elections, something which the CFTC for some time was concerned violated state laws prohibiting betting on politics.
This regulatory debate primarily took place under Joe Biden’s Presidency though, and now under the Trump 2.0 administration the CFTC is now taking a more laid back approach, appearing to leave Kalshi and the Gaming Commissions of Maryland, Nevada and New Jersey to settle legal differences themselves.
Prediction markets have caught interest for a lot of reasons. Firstly, the platforms may pose a competitor to established betting firms, but at the same time changing regulatory attitudes to them may present an opportunity.
Companies could now stand out in the highly competitive US betting space via launching a prediction market, something which companies like Flutter Entertainment have openly considered, while also broadening offerings with the addition of political markets.
The confirmation of an official deal with X will give Polymarket a boost in this rapidly developing precious market space. This may prove to be a slight technological competitive advantage over Kalshi, which announced its own deal with Elon Musk’s social media platform last month only to then retract its statement.
The deal also comes off the back of Polymarket facing its own fair share of regulatory and legal struggles. As well as its spat with the CFTC, the firm’s offices were raided by the FBI following the 2024 US election amid suspicions that US consumers had been able to use its market, while its platform has also been blocked in Belgium and Singapore this year and withdrew from France last year.
Linda Yaccarino, X CEO, commented on the firm’s deal with Polymarket: “Polymarket ensures transparency through its prediction markets, and has grown into a staple source of real-time information for many X users. We are pleased to partner with Polymarket and look forward to bringing their our data and technology to Polymarket users through a range of creative product integrations.”
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