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MLB Signs Multi Year Polymarket Deal
Major League Baseball have signed an exclusive, multi-year deal with prediction markets platform Polymarket
Pet Berisha
March 23, 2026
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Discussed in this edition of Sporting Crypto:
1) The Deal 🤝
2) The Reversal 🔄
3) The Data 📊
4) Concluding Thoughts 💭
The Deal 🤝
Polymarket has become MLB's exclusive prediction market partner.
The deal includes category exclusivity. Polymarket has sole access to MLB marks and logos for prediction market products, meaning other platforms can offer baseball contracts but can't use MLB branding.
As part of the partnership, Polymarket and its brokers receive official league data from Sportradar, MLB's exclusive global data distributor for prediction markets.
The platform also gets brand exposure across MLB's digital ecosystem and at league events.
Like Polymarket’s partnership with MLS, MLB has an integrity framework.
There are restrictions on specific market types, including individual pitches, manager decisions, and umpire performance.
Polymarket will integrate these restrictions into its U.S. Rulebook to ensure all brokers follow the same standards. Of course, the U.S. platform is yet to launch, and Polymarket’s volumes are currently offshore.
MLB also signed a memorandum of understanding with Michael S. Selig, Chairman of the CFTC.
The MOU establishes information sharing between the league and the regulator. Designated representatives will meet regularly to discuss integrity issues affecting MLB games and the prediction market landscape.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said:
"The new agreements that we formed with Polymarket and the CFTC are imperative steps in proactively managing the new and rapidly growing prediction market space."
Shayne Coplan, Polymarket CEO added:
"By working collaboratively with Major League Baseball and regulators, we can create new ways for fans to engage with the game while protecting the integrity of the sport."
The Reversal 🔄
One year ago — March 2025 — MLB sent a letter to the CFTC.
The letter raised "real reservations about the lack of integrity controls around sports event markets offered by prediction markets."
The league's concerns were specific. Athletes across professional sports reported a surge in harassment and threats from gamblers throughout 2024 and early 2025.
Players received direct messages after losing bets. Some received death threats after games where prop bets didn't hit.
MLB's letter made clear the league believed prediction markets posed integrity risks and player safety risks.
Twelve months later, MLB have signed a deal with Polymarket. Presumably, quite a lucrative one.
Polymarket is not fully operational in the U.S. — the platform re-entered the American market in late 2025 via a $112 million acquisition, but the platform is still on a waitlist basis.
The Data 📊
On a 4-week trailing basis, prediction markets have combined for almost $20bn in volume.
Sports is over half of that, contributing 53.2% of the volume - $10.04bn.
[Source: @PredictParity on X]
Polymarket, however, are still seeing larger volumes in Crypto and Politics categories, with Kalshi dominating market share for sports contracts.
In terms of user acquisition, Polymarket is still the dominant force, too.
[Source: @PredictParity on X]
As per this chart, Polymarket is still onboarding more users than all other prediction markets combined on a weekly basis.
Of course, this is without the U.S. market being legal, yet.
Concluding Thoughts 💭
(1) This is marketing
For Polymarket, this is marketing and PR. And it makes sense to do it. Being associated as the official prediction market partner of MLS and MLB will give Polymarket more credibility globally.
(2) There is an overcorrection in the ‘sport integrity’ angle
There is so much being made of the integrity of sports.
There are multiple ways that athletes, coaches and others could ‘insider’ trade or make sporting outcomes sway. They don’t, for the most part, because the risk is too big. And if they do, they will most likely not use onchain prediction markets or prediction markets that are highly regulated.
(3) Polymarket’s volume is still largely offshore. Does it matter?
Polymarket is going to launch in the U.S., soon, if their marketing, hiring and political efforts are anything to go by. But does that matter? Will the liquidity be ubiquitous across the planet (likely not)? It is difficult to answer whether this point which is continuously raised by detractors matter until we see what their onshore product looks like.
All the while, Kalshi just raised $1bn at a $22bn valuation.
It will be interesting to see if they at some point, start veering away from sports, which massively dominates their market.
(5) A battle without nuance
We’ve got prediction markets overcorrecting on sports integrity, and not caring that much about KYC/AML in certain domains.
We have gambling companies calling prediction markets predatory… come on guys.
We have prediction markets trying to articulate why their sports contracts are not gambling… which is getting harder, and harder to do. I do feel sorry for their comms people.
And then we have the counter culture movement where products are starting to differentiate just by the fact they are not integrating a prediction market. “Come and use a broker that doesn’t have player props”.
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