Polymarket Paid Influencers to Drive Election Betting

Polymarket, the popular cryptocurrency-based political betting platform, paid social media influencers to drive engagement ahead of this year’s presidential election.

Citing messages between Armand Saramout, Polymarket’s senior director of growth, and select social media personalities, Bloomberg News broke the story earlier today. It appears as though the company reached out to operators of meme accounts — those posting mostly humorous images and videos — as well as finance-specific accounts on social media platforms such as Instagram.

We’ve reached out to influencers on both sides of the aisle to promote our data and drive traffic and eyeballs to polymarket.com, where 99% of visitors consume news and never place a trade,” a company spokesman said in a statement to Bloomberg.

Multiple Instagram influencers confirmed to the news outlet that they have been in contact with Polymarket and have relationships with the company, but financial terms of those agreements weren’t revealed.

Polymarket Influencer Embrace not Surprising

Companies across myriad industries, including casinos and sports wagering, often tap social media influencers to promote destinations, goods, and services. That embrace has only increased as social commerce has boomed, particularly among key demographics such as Gen Z and millennials.

However, unlike Kalshi and PredicIt, Polymarket isn’t regulated in the US and following a 2022 settlement of $1.4 million with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the platform was barred from targeting US customers.

The website is viewable in this country and it’s possible some eager election bettors in the US are using virtual privacy networks (VPNs) to access the platform.

Polymarket Drew Heat on Another Front

It was reported that Polymarket has told some influencers to create election wagering content that caters to customers outside of this country in an effort to not draw regulatory scrutiny here. However, its parent company spent nearly $270,000 on election ads on Facebook and Instagram, according to Bloomberg.

That raised criticism of bias because nearly half the ads showed former President Trump alone and none showed Vice President Kamala Harris by herself.

“Any suggestion that Polymarket caters to a single party or demographic hasn’t been paying attention to the rapidly shifting market odds over the course of this campaign or to our distinctly nonpartisan and transparent approach to prediction markets,” the Polymarket spokesman told Bloomberg.