(Bloomberg) -- The predictions-betting platform Polymarket has been paying US-based social media influencers to promote election betting on the site — even though it’s barred from letting anyone in the country use the tool to place wagers, including on Tuesday’s presidential race.
In September, Polymarket’s senior director of growth, Armand Saramout, canvassed for sponsorship deals with US influencers, according to outreach messages seen by Bloomberg News.
Over the last few weeks, Instagram pages with large followings have been posting Polymarket-sponsored content under hashtags such as #PMPartner and #PolymarketPartner. The majority are meme pages with account names like @moist, @hoodclips, and @historyinmemes, while others are personal finance influencers such as Eric Pan of @ericnomics.
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A Polymarket spokesman confirmed US outreach, but said it was not intended to spark trades from US visitors. “We’ve reached out to influencers on both sides of the aisle to promote our data and drive traffic and eyeballs to polymarket.com, where 99% of visitors consume news and never place a trade,” he said in a statement. But some US trades are nevertheless getting through — a behavior encouraged by the influencers.
Xavi Fahard, based in California, helps runs Instagram meme page @sarcasm_only. The account, which has 16.6 million followers, reaches a majority millennial female 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 is always going to have substantially less engagement than our actual organic posts,” Fahard said. “But compared to other ads, the Polymarket ones perform around the same, if not better.”
In October, Polymarket was in the process of conducting fresh checks to verify that big spenders on its website are based outside of the US, according to a person familiar with the matter. US traders aren’t allowed to use the platform, which has seen a surge in bets favoring Donald Trump to win the presidential election.
Polymarket blocked US traders following a $1.4 million settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which said it was operating without the correct licensing.
Scrutiny of Polymarket’s US political markets rose significantly in October, thanks to a handful of accounts that spent millions of dollars worth of crypto on bets in favor of Trump’s return to the White House. A company spokesperson said they had investigated and did not believe the owner of the accounts was attempting to manipulate the market, but that they had agreed not to open more of them.
The person behind the US-based Instagram account @trustfundterry, who asked not to disclose his real name to avoid harming his relationships, said he had worked with Polymarket for years. The company often shared a Google Drive with suggested content which he regularly posted in return for a fee.
Polymarket never told him that the content should be tailored for a non-US audience, or asked that he mention that trades shouldn’t take place in the US, he said. Few of the sponsored content posts from other accounts include such disclaimers.
On Monday, a day before the election, @trustfundterry posted a picture of Trump with a 60.5% share against Harris, with a map of the majority of US states painted Republican red. “@Polymarket traders have Trump with an edge to win it. He’s leading in PA which is the key to the election ... Who do you think takes it?” The post included graphics showing a Trump lead in six key swing states.
Polymarket encouraged him to add memes to the posts, including the one on Monday, according to the account owner. “They just want engagement and conversation — the goal is to get eyeballs,” 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 as “the most accurate way to track & forecast the election” in Facebook ads. But the company’s crypto-trader-heavy user base — a Trump-friendly demographic — could be skewing its results.
In addition to partnering with US-based influencers, Polymarket owner Blockratize Inc. spent an estimated $269,875 on election ads targeting millions of people in the US on Facebook and Instagram over the past seven days, according to Meta’s ad library.
The ads asked viewers whether they were voting for Trump or Harris, telling viewers: “don’t trust the polls — trust the markets.”
Of those 47 advertisements, 22 depicted Trump alone, showing odds for the former President’s win shooting ahead of his rival. One asked: “Did serving French fries win Trump the election?”
Where Trump and Harris are shown together in ads, Trump was shown to be ahead. None of the advertisements showed Harris alone.
A spokesman disputed a Trump leaning. “Any suggestion that Polymarket caters to a single party or demographic hasn’t been paying attention to the rapidly shifting market odds over the course of this campaign or to our distinctly nonpartisan and transparent approach to prediction markets,” he said in a statement.
--With assistance from Sarah Frier.
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