How Will MLB’s Partnership with Polymarket Impact Fans?
It’s October 2nd, 2006. David Letterman has welcomed former MLB star Pete Rose onto The Late Show. Dave, sporting his usual dark suit and Midwestern charm, tries to offer an opportunity for light baseball chit-chat. “Let's take a look at the playoffs,” he says, “They’re beginning this week. Who do you like?” The always feisty Rose comes back with a self-aware retort, feigning graveness. “You sound like you’re betting on baseball.” The live studio audience roars with laughter, Letterman cracks up, and even Pete breaks character to chuckle. Sports gambling was the punchline, both as it related to Rose and the then-shady business as a whole. This bit and version of life, in which betting on baseball was so illicit, is practically unrecognizable today. This rings especially true this week after the sport took a step to embrace betting even further, with mixed reactions from fans. More specifically, Major League Baseball has announced a partnership with Polymarket, the global prediction market site. While not technically sports betting, as far as the law is concerned, Polymarket offers a lot of conundrums for the league. Its ethos and business practices are potentially concerning for fans who value any semblance of integrity America’s pastime still holds.
Prediction markets, in short, are platforms that allow users to wager on the outcomes of future events. These future events cover nearly every aspect of life; a visit to the Polymarket home page will prompt questions about oil prices, March Madness, Slovenian elections, and US/Iran conflict timelines. At face value, it is a gambling tool to bet on everything, although the corporations involved have taken issue with that description. Admittedly, “life gambling” sounds like it belongs in an episode of The Twilight Zone, so a rebrand is understandable. The teams behind Polymarket and Kalshi, the other significant voice in the space, pitch their products as financial tools and aggregators of information. The money being thrown around is just a means to an end, a profit incentive so that people will be inclined to “pursue truth” and “accurately predict”. That lengthy description is incredibly intentional. Polymarket’s designation as a financial market means that it is not beholden to the same rules and regulations as traditional sports gambling platforms. Sports gambling requires oversight by individual states; it is not even legal nationwide. Prediction markets are legal nationwide and answer only to a small federal agency. All that being said, for a fan, putting money on a team on Polymarket vs a traditional site like DraftKings is virtually the same experience. Polymarket just gets to swim in bigger ponds because of legalese; bettors are referred to as “traders” who buy “shares” in outcomes, even when the outcome is taking the Boston Red Sox over the New York Yankees on Sunday Night Baseball.
If the financial market versus gambling platform split wasn’t questionable enough for fans, Polymarket took things a step further with its practices, because it is not just a general financial market. It is known as a derivatives market, a financial term that protects it from even further regulation. In layman’s terms, insider trading is not illegal on Polymarket. Numerous cases have emerged recently of dubious bets being placed, seemingly by users who knew more than the public. This has mainly affected the geopolitical corners of the site, but it is not hard to imagine those problems coming for baseball, too. Now, it is not as if these would be entirely new concerns; the game has a chequered past with insiders profiting. Look to the Chicago “Black Sox” scandal at the beginning of the 20th century; look to Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz just a few months ago; look again to Pete Rose. The new development with Polymarket is that insider trading is not necessarily a flaw in their system. It is an encouraged feature. Shanye Coplan, the CEO of the site, has encouraged the idea of insider trading as a tool for truth. It’s easier for him to say this than the head of a casino, because he’s not running an operation where “the house” needs to “win”. The structure of Polymarket, where traders are positioned against one another, means that Coplan makes money no matter what.
This article might lean too far into financial inside baseball–pun fully intended and instantly regretted–but the implications of Major League Baseball partnering with a company like this can feel quite staggering. It may not impact fans directly at first; it may not impact some fans at all. Yet, Polymarket cozying up to the game feels like the floodgates opening for gambling chaos. The league, in tandem with Polymarket and its governing body, has committed to establishing a framework that protects “the integrity” of professional baseball. After consuming much of the public information available, however, Polymarket's promise to protect the integrity of baseball sounds like a mugger promising to protect the integrity of your wallet. It will be interesting to follow prediction markets through the 2026 season, just as it will be interesting to follow the powers that be in the game and the line they walk between profit and people. Which side will they lean towards?
