Polymarket paid creators to film staged bets, review finds

A review of 1,105 videos posted since December by 10 creators found that none of roughly $1.9 million in wagers shown were real. The footage shows mostly college‑age creators placing simulated trades and sometimes celebrating fabricated payouts on near‑identical copies of Polymarket’s platform.

The review identified a wager in about 70% of the clips. In one widely shared video, a student celebrated a $100,000 win tied to a public remark that never occurred; the footage used to build excitement had been filmed earlier and the corresponding real bets lost. Across 118 videos, creators promoted nearly $900,000 in winnings that, if contested in real markets, would have resulted in a net loss of more than $166,000.

Creators were recorded entering trades on dummy versions of the site, including a misspelled domain at “poiymarket.com.” A person familiar with the matter identified some of those pages as built by Polymarket and said other copies appeared to be engineer test environments.

Creators were typically paid about $2,000 to $3,000 a month and were instructed not to disclose a commercial relationship with the company; some added a partner tag to their profiles only after outside inquiries.

Polymarket used a marketing firm called Virality to manage the network of content producers. Payments to creators were conditioned on at least 60% of their audience being based in the U.S., and the promotional push was aimed at U.S. users even though Polymarket’s main offshore site remains geoblocked to Americans following a 2022 settlement with U.S. regulators.

In November 2025, Polymarket received approval for a CFTC‑licensed exchange, Polymarket US, to operate in the United States. The company’s offshore main site continues to block U.S. access.

State authorities have pursued litigation treating some event contracts as illegal gambling. Kentucky filed a suit against Polymarket alleging unlicensed sports wagering, and earlier legal actions were filed in Nevada and Arizona. Federal regulators and the Justice Department have also taken legal steps asserting federal jurisdiction over prediction markets.

Polymarket stated it is “committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets” and plans a comprehensive audit of its promotional content.

Polymarket is a cryptocurrency‑based prediction market that offers contracts tied to political outcomes, sports and other events. The company moved its main operations offshore after a $1.4 million settlement in 2022 and has sought regulatory approval to operate onshore through licensed venues.