Polymarket Spent $1 Million on U.S. Trading Ads Despite Geo Block
Polymarket could not offer trading in the U.S. on the 2024 United States presidential election. Still, the prediction market platform spent nearly $1 million on digital advertising to target Facebook and Instagram users in the U.S. last fall, public records show.
Most of the spending was registered to Meta through Blockratize Inc., which does business as Polymarket. The biggest single ad buy in the campaign cost between $175,000 to $200,000. The most common age demographic that saw the ad was the 35-44 range, at about 20% of viewers, and the most common location was Texas at about 9%. Total spending amounted to $980,076, according to records viewed by Sportico.
There is no evidence Polymarket used these ads to push people in the U.S. to illegally circumvent georestrictions and buy prediction market contracts. The way the social copy is written suggests Polymarket wanted to woo passive users who might be interested in viewing contract price movements even if they couldn’t yet participate in markets. Those users might later become paying customers in the event Polymarket returns to the U.S.
"Are you voting for Trump or Kamala?” read the ad copy seen by Sportico. "Download the Polymarket app for FREE today—the most accurate way to track & forecast the election! See for yourself.”
The Peter Thiel-backed company, recently valued above $1 billion, is based in New York but has not permitted transactions in the U.S. since agreeing to pay a $1.4 million penalty to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 2022 for "offering off-exchange event-based binary options contracts and failure to obtain designation as a designated contract market (DCM) or registration as a swap execution facility (SEF).”
Two recent developments have ramped up speculation surrounding Polymarket’s potential U.S. return: The Department of Justice dropped its Joe Biden-era probe into the firm, and Elon Musk’s X became an official partner not long after a reported agreement between the American social media platform and Polymarket rival Kalshi fell through.
https://www.sportico.com/business/sports-betting/2025/polymarket-advertising-spend-united-states-election-1234863286/