Prediction-market operators have rolled out a wave of celebrity endorsement campaigns timed to NFL opening week, with LeBron James, Sydney Sweeney and Marshawn Lynch among the names fronting new ads as platforms compete for football bettors. Spots featuring James, Sweeney, Lynch and Jeremy Piven have run heavily over the past week, while Pete Sampras resurfaced for the first time in nearly two decades in a Kalshi advertisement tied to the US Open.
The timing is deliberate. The opening of the NFL season traditionally triggers a customer-acquisition scramble among operators offering aggressive promotions, and this year’s push – backed by substantial recent funding rounds – has produced what may be the most frenzied prediction-market marketing campaign since the 2018 PASPA decision.
Equity, not just endorsement
Polymarket signed James, Eli Manning and Derek Jeter, while Novig’s ad featuring Sweeney, titled “Just Sports,” drew comparable attention. The spot positions Novig as sports-only, drawing a contrast with rivals offering markets on political and geopolitical events. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sweeney’s representatives approached Novig as a potential investor, and the company ultimately granted her an undisclosed equity stake. The post promoting the ad had drawn at least 9 million views on X as of Friday afternoon.
The arrangement echoes Kalshi’s deal with Giannis Antetokounmpo during the 2025-26 NBA season, when the two-time MVP received an equity stake in the exchange. Whether such arrangements become the norm across the sector remains to be seen, though the American Gaming Association’s estimate that $40 billion will be wagered on the NFL via prediction markets this year – following nearly $250 million in college football trading volume Kalshi reported on the opening day of that season – underscores the stakes operators are chasing.
Connecticut escalates enforcement
The advertising blitz has run alongside sharpening state scrutiny. On Sept. 10, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont addressed the growth of prediction markets in Hartford, and the state’s Department of Consumer Protection issued cease-and-desist orders to nine unregulated operators, including Polymarket, Robinhood and Underdog Predict, for allegedly failing to meet the state’s consumer-protection standards.
The department went further, issuing nearly 30 subpoenas to licensed gaming service providers and media outlets, among them PayPal, Sportradar Solutions and Plaid. None of those companies is under investigation, but the subpoenas appear to mark the first such action against service providers doing business with prediction markets.
Litigation still unresolved
The marketing push comes as the legal battle over prediction markets’ regulatory status remains open. The Ninth Circuit ruled 3-0 on Aug. 28 that sports-event contracts do not qualify as federally regulated swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act. Kalshi has since filed for an en banc rehearing, while Robinhood petitioned the Supreme Court directly, a move widely expected to gain traction given a circuit split with a separate Third Circuit ruling.
When he is not analysing the latest compliance updates or dissecting quarterly operator results, Florian follows Bundesliga football closely and maintains a healthy skepticism toward anyone claiming to have cracked a winning betting system. He brings a grounded, insider-aware perspective to his writing and is always more interested in the structural story behind the headline than the headline itself.