The meshing of newsrooms and gambling companies seems meant to increase article readership

19 September 2026

Yet it risks blurring the line between journalism and promotion, the public interest and profit motivation.

News organizations large and small have pursued these collaborations in an uncannily similar way, rolling out an ever-increasing number of stories that bundle wagering promotions and referral codes into the mix, all without shining a light on the financial ties. Meanwhile, a spate of new partnerships with prediction-market firms has brought more bets, more disclosure struggles, and increasing questions about editorial independence.

Industry warnings

In March, the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation warned that newsrooms' partnership with prediction markets could erode public trust. Researchers there called on outlets to update their ethics codes and reject financial relationships with gambling entities, including sponsorships and promotions for sports betting apps and prediction markets. That follows reporting by Popular Information's Judd Legum, unearthing that Advance Local, a subsidiary of Advance Publications, routinely inserted referral codes into articles published by its news outlets. That would mean The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and The Star-Ledger alone amplified online games of chance to readers thousands of times.

Gannett pioneered that business model in 2021, when Reuters reported the publishing giant's five-year, $100 million collaboration with Tipico USA Technology. Tagged as the "first of its kind", that deal gave Gannett odds for its outlets, referral fees on customers who signed up and hit the tipico.com links in articles, and millions in digital advertising and sponsored content. That appears to have been very profitable for both firms.

The growing trend

Newsrooms' collaborations with betting companies, and the prediction markets that have mushroomed alongside, have grown from targeted campaigns to a pillar of many outlets' revenue models. Kalshi established relationships with major news providers, including CNN and CNBC. Reporting at the time raised concerns about the consistency and clarity of disclosures in those deals, though both floated customer acquisition and direct investment as part of Kalshi's role in those payments. More commercial partnerships followed: Fox News, New York Times subsidiary The Athletic, and Dow Jones took Kalshi money.

More on this is available via pronostici scommesse sportive.

What The News Republic referred to as "a boom in prediction-market partnerships with media giants" saw many of those relationships formalized. Polymarket, among the world's biggest prediction markets, invested in Substack, as well as hooking up with newsrooms working under the Dow Jones banner. Reporting by Legum estimated positive media coverage of prediction markets doubled across financial-pages syndicated to newspapers, on Polymarket and Kalshi's name.

It's unclear how much, if at all, that movement of cash from betting companies to newsrooms was reported to readers. No central resource exists for tracking the partnership and promotional deals, though former political strategist Liz Judge's incubator in Charlottesville was said to be building an index of them.

In a podcast recording for the newsroom project, Legum told media ethics scholar Francis Keene that optimism about player protection "hatched [as] a vested interest in gambling has crept into the pages of newspapers and news websites." Keene worried that betting and casino companies would use newsroom partnerships to reach a coveted demographic: affluent, 18-25-year-old Americans.

All this suggests that millions were locked solid, but the contests to influence readers' gambling habits looms open. A public that depends on newsrooms nowadays thinks of publishers as a stumbling repellent, not as a vapid trading partner of growth-hungry tech firms. That's an open question in gambling's battle for the public mind.