Genius Sports Data Deal Brings Kalshi and Polymarket Onboard

The two largest prediction markets, Kalshi and Polymarket, have each reached a separate agreement with Genius Sports for the supply of official league data. Polymarket will also add exclusive live streams for select competitions, including Italy's Serie A, to its US platform. The agreements are expected to improve the accuracy of contract settlements and help identify suspicious trading activity.

Genius Sports works with over 700 sports organisations worldwide, including the NFL, the English Premier League and the NCAA. The company will now provide its data and tools to the two largest prediction platforms.

How this will affect contract settlements

Genius Sports representatives explained that pulling in official league data as it happens should make settling sports contracts more transparent and cut down on operators leaning on unofficial or delayed feeds. Ari Borod, who leads sports business development at Polymarket, pointed to trust and transparency as the factors that will determine how prediction markets grow over time, adding that pairing official data with live broadcasts is what lets the company build something customers actually feel confident using.

Kalshi’s head of sports partnerships, Adam Barrick, made a similar point, saying that as the prediction markets space keeps expanding at speed, official data and integrity checks are turning into a bigger priority rather than a smaller one.

In addition to receiving data from Genius Sports, both platforms will share information with the company regarding their own trading activity on sports markets. This should provide leagues and sports federations with greater opportunities to analyse trading patterns in real time.

Such data sharing is necessary to identify suspicious trading more quickly, which may indicate match-fixing or the illegal use of inside information about matches or players.

How prediction markets differ from bookmakers

Unlike traditional betting, where a punter bets against a bookmaker, in prediction markets traders buy and sell stakes in the outcomes of events from one another. For example, one trader might be willing to pay 40 cents for a stake in the outcome where a team wins the championship, whilst another buys the opposite position for 60 cents. If the prediction comes true, the winning position is settled at one dollar per stake.