Polymarket Woos Sports Leagues For High-Speed Data Amid Regulatory Questions

Polymarket has inked a fresh deal to get access to high-speed data and streaming video content for more than 20 sporting associations, a sign that leagues are warming to prediction markets even as their legal status in the U.S. remains contested.

An expanded partnership with Nasdaq-listed data provider Sportradar will bring official feeds to a broader range of Polymarket’s bets, reducing lags in the delivery of real-time information about sports. That could appeal to both casual users of its app and the high-frequency trading firms moving into prediction markets.

Under the new agreement, Sportradar will provide Polymarket’s U.S. exchange with official data for major sports associations including Germany’s Bundesliga soccer league, UTR Pro tour events and tennis Grand Slams, as well as Australia’s National Basketball League and the Chinese Basketball Association. The new deal will give Polymarket exclusive rights to stream events including Bundesliga and Euroleague Basketball games in its app.

Sportradar and Polymarket plan to announce the deal later on Thursday.

Sportradar distributes official data supplied or authorized by sports leagues. That allows betting operators to settle contracts faster and more accurately than they can with other unofficial sources of data, while giving traders timely information and updated odds as games unfold. The company provides fraud-detection tools as well, which piece together data from across markets to spot manipulation and other suspicious betting activity.

Though Polymarket offers bets across a wide range of sports, it doesn’t have league-authorized data for all of them. Sportradar, meanwhile, has been working to convince more of its existing partners to share their data with prediction markets despite the regulatory uncertainty surrounding that form of betting.

Polymarket was an early leader in prediction markets, helping the yes-or-no contracts on real-world events go mainstream, while the odds implied by its customers’ bets emerged as a prominent sentiment gauge for elections and other events. But it has fallen far behind rival Kalshi in terms of transaction volume in recent months, with Kalshi spending heavily on marketing and other incentives to lure traders.

Polymarket already receives Sportradar feeds for Major League Baseball, National Hockey League and Major League Soccer, which Kalshi also has access to. Executives from both Polymarket and Sportradar said the new data agreement can help the prediction market attract and keep users who want to watch events and bet in real time.

“If you’ve got low-latency, premium content that has mass awareness like MLB or ATP–that helps you engage with a significantly larger customer base,” Sportradar Chief Operating Officer Sameer Deen said.

Gaining access to official data and content from sports leagues also helps prediction markets compete on a more level playing field with traditional sportsbooks such as Draftkings and Fanduel, which already have access to the data.

Since incorporating official Major League Baseball data in March, Polymarket has seen an increase in trading volume on baseball wagers and customers returning to place bets on those markets, according to Ari Borod, Polymarket’s president of sports business development.

“It’s about U.S. sports fans,” Borod said. “It’s pretty obvious the sports they love. They love basketball, they love baseball, they love tennis.”

At the same time, prediction markets including Polymarket are increasingly courting big Wall Street trading firms to make markets on their exchanges. Those firms use automated, high-speed strategies to make profits on short-lived price moves, and their techniques depend on reliable data and odds that update accurately.

Switzerland-based Sportradar pays major sports organizations for the right to distribute their official live data and streaming content, sometimes on an exclusive basis, often under multimillion-dollar contracts. It then sells data, statistics and odds to bookmakers and gambling companies such as DraftKings and FanDuel.

For sports associations, making data available to Polymarket and other prediction markets can be a way to gain a devoted following for their events. Real-time and sometimes hyper-specific bets give prediction market customers a reason to follow sporting events and individual athletes closely.

For instance, on Wednesday, Polymarket was offering live bets on whether Real Madrid star Kylian Mbappe would score a goal against Real Sociedad; if there would be a run in the first inning of the baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks; or whether Golden State Valkyries forward Gabby Williams would record more than 2.5 rebounds during the WNBA game against the Connecticut Sun.

Big League Buy-In

Still, getting sports organizations to participate hasn’t always been easy. Though betting on sports accounts for roughly 85% to 90% of transaction volume on U.S. prediction markets, the wagers remain legally contested. Major U.S. leagues including MLB and NHL have agreed to share data, but the National Basketball Association has yet to do so.

The federal regulator overseeing prediction markets, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, argues the contracts fall under its oversight. But states say fast-growing platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are offering illegal sports betting and bypassing state licensing and taxes. Prediction markets’ regulatory standing could shift under future CFTC leadership or if courts side with the states.

On top of that, prediction markets have drawn attention for potential manipulation, including CFTC enforcement actions over alleged insider trading. Sports leagues have long been cautious about betting-related risks to fair play.

Sportradar has been working over the last year to get buy-in from associations so that it can offer their data and other services to prediction markets, a process that has taken longer than the company expected. In August, Sportradar cut its forecast for full-year revenue growth due in part to delays in signing prediction market deals.

“It took us quite a while to negotiate these deals with the leagues and with the players in the space,” CEO Carsten Koerl told analysts on an investor call. “It was, for us in 2026, a lot of work to negotiate the deals, but also to convince our league partners that they’re going into this,” he said, noting that the regulations relating to the prediction market industry were “fluid.”

While prediction markets themselves have been the focus of lawsuits by states, Sportradar and sports associations could face legal exposure as well.

When the CFTC sued the State of Minnesota earlier this year, arguing that the state’s ban on prediction markets was unconstitutional, the federal regulator noted that Minnesota’s new laws were particularly expansive. For instance, Sportradar’s provision of Major League Baseball data to Polymarket could make either party subject to criminal prosecution under the Minnesota ban, the CFTC argued in court documents. The CFTC said the state’s ban interfered with the federal regulator’s jurisdiction over swaps.

The new prediction-market deals come as Sportradar has been under investor scrutiny. The company’s stock tumbled earlier this year following short-seller accusations that a significant share of the company’s revenue came from serving operations in jurisdictions that prohibit online gambling.

Sportradar said the short sellers misunderstood the company’s business and that their claims contained “several factual inaccuracies.” Sportradar said its exposure to unlicensed or gray-market activity was between roughly 5% and 13% of its revenue.