MLB becomes the latest — and biggest — US sports league to partner up with a prediction market.
Major League Baseball has entered the realm of prediction markets, announcing deals simultaneously with Polymarket and the CFTC on Thursday.
Polymarket has signed on as the league’s Official Prediction Market, while MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and CFTC Chair Michael Selig have agreed to a memorandum of understanding with the ostensible interest of protecting the integrity of the sport of baseball.
The Polymarket deal is valued in the range of $150-300 million over a potential three years, per sources cited by Front Office Sports.
The arrangement has the hallmarks of a traditional league sponsorship: Polymarket and its brokers get exclusive access to MLB marks and logos, and the Polymarket brand will see placement on MLB’s digital assets and at league events. Polymarket also receives access to official league data from Sportradar.
MLB also has official relationships with FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM.
While Polymarket has yet to fully launch the US version of its platform, sports event contracts are available on the app, where the MLB logo is already visible. Baseball markets, though, don’t appear to be active.
Saw This One Coming
MLB isn’t the first pro league to partner with a prediction market, but it’s the largest US sports property to make a move into the emerging yet controversial asset class.
The NHL has licensing deals with both Polymarket and Kalshi, and Polymarket also has marketing agreements with MLS and UFC.
MLB’s move was foreshadowed by Manfred in February. He said prediction markets were part of the discussion at last month’s owners meetings about the recent betting controversy involving Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz.
“We thought it was important for the owners to be updated on why prediction markets are different than sports betting, why we might want to consider being in be business with prediction markets in an effort to protect our integrity, to get the kind of protections we need,” Mandfred told reporters.
While “integrity” isn’t exactly synonymous with “prediction markets” in the minds of many gambling and financial industry observers, it’s a tenet Manfred and Selig are hanging their hat on.
“We’ve committed to work together to protect the integrity and resilience of prediction markets relating to professional baseball,” Selig said in a statement.
Manfred added in MLB’s press release:
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. Protecting the integrity of the game on the field is our top priority. By engaging in this community, we are able to work together to create clear boundaries with the goal of mitigating risk while providing fan engagement opportunities.”
More to Come?
The sports and gambling worlds shook when NHL signed its prediction market deals in October. A few months later, no one is particularly surprised by the MLB’s hook-up.
This really leaves only the NFL and NBA without prediction market dance partners, and it feels like just a matter of time until we hear more news.
At NBA All-Star festivities in Los Angeles last month, Commissioner Adam Silver said the league is “looking at prediction markets essentially in the same way that we’re looking at sports betting markets or sports betting companies.”
The NFL, meanwhile, walked back comments by Exec VP Jeff Miller about the fan engagement benefits of prediction markets.
As we wrote last month, if prediction markets keep moving forward with sports under the regulatory blessing of the federal government, they represent an opportunity leagues are unlikely to pass up.
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