Prediction markets went from niche curiosity to mainstream advertising category. Most marketers haven't noticed yet.
Key Takeaways:
- Advertisers spent over $50 million on betting platforms in 2025 — and ad revenue in the space is growing at 41% year over year
- Alcohol brands are the single largest category, spending 15–20% of total platform ad dollars while shifting away from live sports
- Quick-service restaurants have already surpassed their entire 2025 ad spend on betting platforms with five months still left in 2026
- Meta is entering the prediction market space — and the real play is almost certainly advertising & attention, not gambling
In this episode of Media Monitor, Kelly and Sean pull Guideline's advertising data on one of the industry's most quietly explosive categories. What they found is a market growing faster than almost anyone is tracking — and a brand safety story that would have seemed impossible five years ago.
Prediction Markets Aren't A Joke Anymore: $50 Million in Ad Spend
Prediction markets didn't start as a serious financial product. Platforms like Polymarket were widely available in the UK long before they gained traction in the US, where the regulatory environment kept them at arm's length for years. They started as a way for people to put small amounts of money behind their opinions — the digital equivalent of a friendly bet. You know... Which type of shoes will this player wear? What type of drink will this actress order? The list goes on and to be honest, the bets became more intrinsically involved into what actually impacts our lives.
The turning point was the 2024 election cycle. Prediction markets called the outcome more accurately than most traditional polling models, and suddenly the "let's bet on random stuff" framing gave way to something more credible. The crowd is often pretty predictive, and when the crowd is right consistently, money follows.
Guideline's data captures what happened next. In 2025, advertisers spent roughly $50 million on sports betting and prediction market platforms in the US. That number surprised even the hosts — and it should surprise most because the total average revenue for these platforms is growing around 17% year over year. Their ad revenue is growing at 41% year over year. The advertising business is outpacing the underlying platform business by more than double which means this is becoming a potentially major strategic channel.
It's All About Brand Safety: Betting Markets Got A Makeover
Five years ago, sports betting platforms were broadly considered off-limits for major brand advertisers. The category was legally ambiguous in most US states, culturally associated with problem gambling, and considered too risky for brands with large consumer audiences and agency compliance teams.
That has changed substantially and the name change is part of the story. "Gambling" carries baggage whereas "Prediction markets" does not. Polymarket and Kalshi don't position themselves as betting apps. They position themselves as forecasting platforms. That framing matters enormously to the brand safety conversation that happens inside agencies and marketing departments before any dollar gets placed.
The regulatory environment has also shifted. Sports betting is now legal in the majority of US states. The platforms are publicly visible, they are now being heavily covered in mainstream financial media, and increasingly used by credible institutions to track political and economic outcomes. The brand adjacency math has changed. What was once a liability is now, for the right categories, a feature.
The $50 million in 2025 ad spend is a direct reflection of that shift. Agencies representing major global brands are clearing these platforms for investment. Guideline works with agencies representing some of the world's largest brands — organizations deeply concerned about where their brands appear. The fact that those agencies are now clearing betting platforms for investment, and that $50 million is flowing in, is arguably the most fascinating part of the growth story. These aren't fringe advertisers just throwing advertisement here and there. These are major brands deciding that prediction markets are, if not fully brand safe, at least brand-adjacent to safe. The rebrand from gambling to forecasting is a big reason they were able to cross that threshold.
Meta Wants In on Prediction Markets. Here's Why That Makes Sense.
Meta announced a new prediction market initiative this week called Arena. It's points-based rather than dollar-based which a deliberate choice to sidestep the regulatory complexity that comes with real-money wagering. It's not publicly available yet. On the surface, it looks like Meta copying another emerging platform, which it has done with varying degrees of success for years when we look at products like Threads and Metaverse versus Facebook and the Instagram purchase. But the more interesting question is why.
Meta already captures roughly a third of all global advertising growth. It's keeping people on platform, returning to platform, and engaging with content in ways that create advertising inventory. Their core competency is not prediction markets. Prediction markets are, behaviorally, one of the stickiest products imaginable. You place a bet, you check the odds, they shift, you check again, and on the day of the event you're refreshing every few minutes. That engagement loop — the same psychological architecture that drives slot machines and social media scrolling — is something Meta understands better than almost any company on earth. They pioneered the poke (not to mention the thumbs up). They built the infinite scroll. Now they're building a gambling-adjacent platform and calling it forecasting.
The bet, if you'll allow it, is that Arena is less about prediction markets and more about creating a new surface for advertising inventory. A highly engaged user checking odds multiple times a day is an advertiser's dream.
Alcohol Brands Shift Their Spend From Live Sports to Prediction Markets
The single largest advertising category on betting platforms is alcohol. Beverage brands represent roughly 15–20% of all ad spend in the sports gambling space — significantly higher than their 7–8% share of the broader advertising market. They are deliberately over-invested here, and the data shows why.
Alcohol brands' compound annual growth rate in this specific channel has been running around 30% per year for four to five years. Over the same period, their live sports spend has essentially flatlined at around 1% growth. The strategy is becoming readable in the data: they still want to be in sports, but they've found a cheaper and more targeted way to get there, especially in a much newer, rapidly expanding market.
The logic isn't complicated. Prediction markets and sports betting platforms attract the exact audience alcohol advertisers want — sports-engaged, predominantly male, skewing younger — at a fraction of the CPM they'd pay for a broadcast placement. "What goes better with a bet than a beer" isn't just a tagline, it's a media strategy.
Quick-Service Restaurants and Telecom Are Accelerating in Prediction Markets
Alcohol got there first. Others have caught onto this nugget of goodness in the advertising market as well. Quick-service restaurants have already surpassed their entire 2025 ad investment on betting platforms with roughly five months remaining in 2026. It is apparent that when a category eclipses a full year's spend before the year is half over, something has changed in how those brands view the channel.
Telecom is massively shifting dollars as well. Wireless and phone brands spent around $7 million on sports betting platforms in 2025, roughly double their investment from the past couple of years. For a category that tends to move methodically and at scale, doubling down in a single year is a meaningful signal.
The outlier in the other direction is automotive. Auto brands — historically among the most aggressive live sports advertisers — have spent approximately $25,000 on betting platforms in 2026 to date. Last year, the figure was in the millions. That pullback looks less like a deliberate exit and more like a category that tested the channel, didn't find the return it needed, and moved on. Not every advertiser finds value here. The ones that do are becoming increasingly obvious.
What Marketers Should Watch
What is clear right now:
- Prediction market ad spend is growing at 41% year over year — nearly 2.5x the rate of (prediction) platform revenue growth, which means brands are treating this as a priority channel
- The categories moving fastest — alcohol, telecom, QSR — share a common thread: they want sports-adjacent audiences at below-broadcast pricing
- Brand safety clearance is no longer the barrier it was; agencies are approving these buys at scale
- Meta's entry will bring mainstream attention and likely accelerate investment from categories that have been waiting for a larger, more familiar platform to enter the space
- OpenAI's reported IPO delay and shift toward cost-per-click ad pricing signals continued pressure on AI companies to find sustainable ad revenue models — a separate story, but one worth watching alongside prediction market growth as both represent emerging advertising frontiers
Written by Cassie Bryson-Evans.
Media Monitor is a weekly podcast breaking down what's happening in media and advertising — and what it actually means. New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
