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Prediction markets flood NFL season with massive advertising campaigns

Prediction markets are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on celebrity campaigns to compete with major sportsbooks for NFL bettors this season.

Written by the BettingEdgeHub desk, 10 September 2026

The NFL season kicked off with a Super Bowl rematch between Seattle and New England, bringing a massive wave of betting advertisements back to your screens. Prediction markets have entered their first full football season at scale and are flooding TV, streaming, and social media. These platforms are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to win over customers in a push that looks like the early days of the sportsbook boom.

New platforms recruit celebrities

Novig has launched a provocative campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney to promote its platform. Polymarket has signed major sports stars like LeBron James, Eli Manning, and Sue Bird to front its NFL campaign. Meanwhile, Betr has reunited the cast of the television show Entourage to promote its new product. These campaigns are driving up customer acquisition costs across the entire industry.

Traditional sportsbooks are fighting back with massive budgets of their own. FanDuel expects to spend roughly 270 million dollars in adjusted EBITDA this year on promotions to keep its market share. DraftKings is focusing its marketing efforts on states where traditional sports betting remains illegal, such as California and Texas. DraftKings is also running attack ads directly targeting rival prediction markets.

Different rules for prediction markets

Because prediction markets are regulated federally, they do not have to follow the strict state rules that govern traditional sportsbooks. This means they often bypass state requirements for responsible gambling messages and promotion disclosures. Traditional operators argue this gives prediction markets an unfair advantage in the battle for new customers. More than half of the digital sports betting ads seen through July came from these federally regulated companies.

For bettors living in states like California and Texas where sports betting is illegal, these new platforms offer a legal way to get skin in the game. Traditional books cannot accept your sports bets in those states, but federally regulated prediction markets can. This regulatory loophole is why you are seeing so many ads targeted at your region.