Major League Baseball named Polymarket its exclusive official prediction market partner Thursday and simultaneously signed a memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission - the first such agreement between the federal derivatives regulator and any professional sports league.
The dual announcements come six days before Opening Day and roughly four months after the league's most serious integrity crisis in recent memory.
In late 2025, Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were arrested on federal charges of manipulating pitch types and accepting bribes from Dominican Republic bettors.
Both are scheduled for trial this fall.
The scandal drove MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to publicly warn owners in January that prediction market deals were imminent and that integrity frameworks were required before any partnership was finalized.
What the Polymarket Deal Includes
The partnership gives Polymarket and its brokers exclusive access to MLB branding and logos, official league data through Sportradar, and marketing placement across MLB's digital channels and events.
The agreement requires Polymarket to integrate uniform integrity controls into its U.S. rulebook covering all brokers.
Both parties agreed to restrict markets presenting integrity risks - specifically contracts on individual pitches, managerial decisions, and umpire performance, the exact categories exposed in the Guardians scandal.
Though Polymarket holds exclusive branding rights, MLB said it intends to require all other prediction market platforms offering baseball contracts to adopt equivalent protections in their own rulebooks.
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The CFTC Agreement
The CFTC-MLB MOU establishes a formal confidential information-sharing channel, with designated representatives from each organization meeting regularly on potential integrity threats.
The agreement explicitly does not supersede state gambling laws - a significant carve-out given ongoing legal disputes between state regulators and prediction market platforms over jurisdictional authority.
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig called the agreement a step toward giving the agency "additional tools to protect these markets and its participants from fraud, manipulation, and other abuses."
Selig noted that the CFTC relies on leagues for insight into which market types are most susceptible to on-field manipulation.
The deal advances Polymarket's push into regulated U.S. sports infrastructure. The UFC signed a Polymarket partnership last year, and Polymarket and rival Kalshi are both reported to be pursuing valuations near $20 billion.
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