Kalshi has signed exclusive, multi-year partnerships with five Major League Baseball teams, becoming the official prediction market partner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox, Atlanta Braves, San Diego Padres, and San Francisco Giants. Announced on Aug. 25, the agreements give Kalshi commercial relationships with one-sixth of MLB’s 30 clubs in its first push into team-level baseball sponsorships.
The five agreements cover in-stadium signage alongside social, digital, radio, and fan activations, although the exact inventory differs between clubs. Kalshi will have LED signage throughout Dodger Stadium and has secured naming rights to the Gold Glove Bar, which becomes the Kalshi 435 Club, while Dodgers fans will also receive team-specific offers through the Kalshi app and on-site activations in Centerfield Plaza. Fenway Park will feature Kalshi signage alongside integrations on WEEI, while the Giants deal includes advertising at Oracle Park, radio placements, and fan activations.
Kalshi says trading volume across its baseball markets has increased 36-fold year over year, giving the company a fairly obvious reason to spend more money attaching its name directly to MLB teams. Head of Sports Partnerships Adam Barrick said fans were already using Kalshi while following the clubs, with the sponsorships intended to extend that existing activity rather than introduce baseball markets from scratch. The company did not provide the underlying trading volumes or financial terms of the five deals.
MLB already has its own prediction market agreement with one of Kalshi’s largest competitors, having signed Polymarket as its exclusive league-level prediction market exchange in March. That multi-year agreement gives Polymarket access to MLB branding and official data distributed through Sportradar, while the league also established integrity controls around more sensitive markets involving individual pitches, umpire decisions, and similar in-game events. Kalshi’s new agreements are club-level marketing partnerships and do not replace Polymarket’s league-wide position or give Kalshi the same official data rights.
Seven MLB clubs now have prediction market partners after the New York Mets signed a multi-year agreement with Novig in July and the New York Yankees added Polymarket earlier this month. The Yankees agreement brought Polymarket signage and fan experiences to Yankee Stadium, while the Mets became the first individual MLB franchise to sign with a prediction market operator. Kalshi adding five teams in a single announcement has taken what was a two-club experiment at the beginning of August to almost a quarter of the league before the end of the month.
Three of Kalshi’s new partners are also based in California, where conventional sports betting remains illegal after voters rejected legalization proposals in 2022. The Dodgers, Padres, and Giants can therefore promote a platform offering contracts on sports outcomes despite licensed sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel being unable to offer regular online sports betting in the state. Kalshi argues that its contracts are federally regulated financial products overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than wagers subject to individual state gambling laws.
The Red Sox agreement puts the same regulatory argument directly inside another ongoing legal dispute. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell secured a preliminary injunction against Kalshi in January, arguing the company must obtain a state gaming license before offering sports event contracts to Massachusetts customers. Kalshi has challenged the ruling and maintained that federal commodities law preempts state gambling regulation, while its branding had already begun appearing at Fenway before the formal partnership announcement.
Kalshi is fighting versions of that dispute across several states, including Nevada, where regulators have accused the company of failing to comply with geolocation requirements and sought daily penalties that could reach $120,000. Courts around the country have reached different conclusions over whether sports event contracts fall exclusively under federal commodities regulation or can also be restricted under state gambling law, leaving the legal status of the model far less settled than the growing number of sports sponsorships might suggest.
MLB clubs are nevertheless moving quickly into the category, with Kalshi, Polymarket, and Novig now competing for team inventory while Polymarket holds the league-level deal. Kalshi’s five partnerships put its name inside some of baseball’s largest markets and three California ballparks where traditional online sportsbooks cannot operate, while its reported 36-fold growth in baseball trading suggests the sport has already become an important part of its business. The legal fight over whether those markets should be treated differently from sports betting is continuing at the same time the products themselves are becoming increasingly difficult to separate from mainstream sports sponsorship.