Every day, a newsletter from the prediction market Polymarket hits my inbox, filled with breathless summaries of the day’s top stories. These dispatches, from ‘Houthis Reveal New Precision Strike Capabilities’ to ‘World War I, 2.0?’, are recognizably a commercial editorial product, and one that is playing a crucial role in the prediction market ecosystem.

The industry is embroiled in legal battles over whether these markets are financial services or gambling platforms. For Polymarket and its archrival Kalshi, this means entrenching themselves into the mainstream media apparatus in a particularly aggressive way. They are integrated into a quarter of the top 20 companies listed in the S&P 500’s Communications Services sector, partnering with Dow Jones, Substack, CNN, CNBC, and Fox Corp. None of the agreements facilitate trading; instead, they are mainly about data sharing. News outlets want to know what people are putting their money on, and prediction markets are happy to oblige.

Providing data is only a small part of how these companies function as new media entities. On social media, their official accounts post like news outlets, adopting a vernacular that mashes up PopCrave’s frenzied sensibility with Bloomberg’s coverage areas. The efforts haven’t been wholly reliable, as a New York Times analysis earlier this year found that Polymarket’s newsy social accounts have published ‘false and misleading information.’

Chief executive and founder Shayne Coplan has referred to the company’s partnership with X as ‘News 2.0.’ In 2024, the company hinted at even more expansive ambitions, recruiting for an editor in chief role to lead ‘content and data journalism’ efforts. While it never made that hire, political analyst and media founder Nate Silver came on later that year as an adviser. But on its careers page, the company beckons prospective employees by playing this angle up: ‘Become the new front page of the internet.’

As Polymarket and Kalshi continue to expand their editorial projects, it’s clear that they are not just prediction markets, but also media companies. But why not both? After all, financial services companies have jumped into the media sector before, most obviously Bloomberg, which initially focused on providing market data and financial analytics before expanding to include journalism products.