Polymarket paid US social media influencers for election content

Armand Saramout, senior director of growth at Polymarket, sought sponsorship deals with U.S. influencers in September, according to outreach notices obtained by Bloomberg News.

In recent weeks, Instagram pages with large followings have posted Polymarket-sponsored content under hashtags such as #PMPartner and #PolymarketPartner. Most are meme pages with account names like @moist, @hoodclips, and @historyinmemes, while others are personal finance influencers like Eric Pan of @ericnomics.

A Polymarket spokesperson confirmed the U.S. reach but said it was not intended to boost trading from U.S. visitors. “We reached out to influencers on both sides to promote our data and drive traffic and attention to polymarket.com, where 99% of visitors consume news and never transact,” he said in a statement. Still, some U.S. stores are making it through — behavior encouraged by influencers.

Xavi Fahard, based in California, helps run the Instagram meme page @sarcasm_only. The account, which has 16.6 million followers, reaches a predominantly female millennial audience, Fahard said. A few weeks ago they were connected to Polymarket through agencies and have since entered into a multi-post deal with the betting platform.

“An ad will always generate significantly less engagement than our actual organic posts,” Fahard said. “But when compared to other ads, Polymarket’s ads perform about equally well, if not better.”

Polymarket was in the process of conducting new checks in October to ensure that major backers on its site are based outside the U.S., according to a person familiar with the matter. US traders are not allowed to use the platform due to a surge in bets in favor of Donald Trump in the presidential election.

Polymarket blocked U.S. traders after a $1.4 million settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that said the company was operating without the proper license.

Attention to Polymarket's U.S. political markets increased significantly in October as a handful of accounts spent millions of dollars' worth of cryptocurrencies on bets in favor of Trump's return to the White House. A company spokesman said it had investigated and did not believe the owner of the accounts was attempting to manipulate the market, but had agreed not to open any further accounts.

The person behind the US-based Instagram account @trustfundterry, who asked not to reveal his real name to avoid jeopardizing his relationships, said he had worked with Polymarket for years. The company often shared a Google Drive with suggested content, which he published periodically for a fee.

Polymarket never told him that the content should be tailored to a non-U.S. audience or asked him to mention that it should not do business in the U.S., he said. Few of the sponsored content posts from other accounts contain such disclaimers.

On Monday, a day before the election, @trustfundterry posted a picture of Trump at 60.5% against Harris, with a map of the majority of US states painted Republican red. “@Polymarket traders have Trump edge to win. He's leading in PA, which is key to the election…Who do you think will be victorious?” The post included graphics showing a Trump lead in six key swing states.

According to the account owner, Polymarket encouraged him to add memes to the posts, including Monday's post. “They just want engagement and conversation – the goal is to get attention,” he said.

Election polls, meanwhile, show Trump and Kamala Harris in a tight race with no obvious winner.

Polymarket has sought to position itself as a more reliable alternative to the polls, marketing itself in Facebook ads as “the most accurate way to track and predict the election.” But the company's user base, which runs many crypto traders – a pro-Trump demographic – could skew its results.

In addition to partnering with U.S.-based influencers, Polymarket owner Blockratize Inc. spent an estimated $269,875 on election advertising in the last seven days, reaching millions of people in the U.S. on Facebook and Instagram, according to its advertising library Meta emerges.

The ads asked viewers whether they would vote for Trump or Harris and told viewers: “Don’t trust the polls – trust the markets.”

Of those 47 ads, 22 featured only Trump, showing the former president's chances of winning over his rival. One asked: “Did serving french fries win Trump the election?”

Where Trump and Harris are shown together in the ad, Trump is shown to be in the lead. None of the ads featured Harris alone.

A spokesman denied any Trump bias. “Any suggestion that Polymarket is targeting a single party or demographic does not take into account the rapidly changing market opportunities over the course of this campaign, nor our clearly unbiased and transparent approach to prediction markets,” he said in a statement.

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