Key Highlights

  • The Journal reviewed more than 1,100 videos and found that none of the roughly $1.9 million in bets shown were real; across 118 videos, creators celebrated about $900,000 in fabricated winnings, though those same bets would have actually lost more than $166,000 if placed on the real platform.

  • Creators were paid about $2,000 to $3,000 a month and told not to disclose the arrangement; Polymarket built dummy sites for the videos including one at the misspelled URL "poiymarket.com," which visually resembles the real domain when the letter "i" is capitalized.

  • The campaign targeted US users despite Polymarket having been barred from the American market since a 2022 settlement with the CFTC; Polymarket told the Journal it is committed to transparent markets and plans a comprehensive audit of its promotional content.

Polymarket paid mostly college-age creators to film fake bets on near-identical copies of its website as part of a growth campaign targeting American users, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation. The Journal reviewed more than 1,100 videos and found that none of the roughly $1.9 million in bets shown in the content were real. Across 118 videos, creators celebrated approximately $900,000 in fabricated winnings — bets that would have actually lost more than $166,000 had they been placed on the live platform.

To produce the videos, Polymarket built dummy websites that closely mirrored its real interface, including one hosted at the deliberately misspelled URL "poiymarket.com" — a domain that visually resembles the genuine "polymarket.com" when the lowercase letter "i" is displayed in a capitalized font. Creators were paid roughly $2,000 to $3,000 a month for the work and told not to disclose the paid arrangement to their audiences, a violation of FTC disclosure rules that apply to paid promotional content regardless of whether the underlying product is real or simulated.

The campaign was directed at users in the United States despite Polymarket having been prohibited from offering its prediction market platform to Americans since a 2022 settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in which the company paid a $1.4 million fine and agreed to block US access. The fake-win videos appear to have been part of a strategy to build brand awareness and drive sign-ups in a market the platform is legally barred from operating in. When contacted by the Journal, Polymarket said it is committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets and announced plans for a comprehensive audit of its promotional content and creator partnerships. The disclosure adds regulatory and reputational pressure to a platform already navigating a $120 million market dispute and recurring insider trading concerns.