A university student in the footage has just won a big bet on Polymarket. The website looked like Polymarket, the bet looked like a bet, and the win looked like a win. None of it was real. The video was shot on an imitation of the site, and the win was made up.
According to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, this was not an isolated clip. Polymarket paid around ten creators, mostly of student age, to film themselves making fictional trades. TechCrunch, which picked up the case, describes videos shot on “near-perfect copies” of the site, with trades and wins “that were not real”.
How the fake wins were made
The WSJ reviewed 1,105 videos from ten promoted creators between December and mid-May. About 70% of them showed some bet, and none of the bets was real. In 118 videos the creators celebrated fake winnings totalling around $900,000. The same bets would in fact have lost more than $166,000.
The creators earned roughly $2,000 to $3,000 a month and were instructed not to disclose the payment. Some of the clips were filmed on fake websites, such as poiymarket.com. The finished videos were then spread by the marketing firm Virality, and gathered more than 140 million views with them on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
One of the creators, Razeen Khan, who worked with the platform until March, described it with the words “We're depicting what actually happens.” Polymarket said it is “committed to maintaining accurate, fair, and transparent markets”, and announced an audit of its promotional content.
Creators as a cheap distribution layer
Polymarket did not buy advertising space. It recruited a network of creators, paid them amounts an order of magnitude lower than a classic campaign, and let a marketing contractor seed the clips. Reach like that, at a few thousand dollars a month per creator, is distribution that a TV spot cannot buy.
Deniability was key. According to the WSJ, creators were told not to mention that Polymarket was paying them. They added the label “@polymarket partner” to their bios only once journalists began asking questions. The US Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile, requires people paid to recommend a product to disclose their ties. Between the advertiser and the viewer, only the creator remained.
Polymarket is not a marginal player. Prediction markets reached a record open interest of $1.48 billion in the week ending 15 June, according to data from a16z Crypto cited by Cryptopolitan.
European rules ban hidden advertising
In the European Union this model would run into trouble quickly. In its Influencer Legal Hub, the European Commission states that advertising, including paid collaborations on social networks, “must be disclosed”. Hidden advertising falls under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, which treats undisclosed paid promotion as a misleading omission.
When the Commission screened 576 influencers in 2024, 97% of them posted commercial content, but only 20% systematically labelled it as advertising. 358 accounts ended up in a further investigation. The rule exists, but practice ignores it.
The pressure is therefore shifting onto advertisers. In July 2025 the Commission launched a consultation on the Digital Fairness Act, which targets exactly “hidden marketing”, where creators do not clearly label advertising. Among the tools under consideration is a duty for brands and agencies to ensure that creators follow the rules.
A creator network can deliver a reach that a standard campaign cannot, but whoever hired it is responsible for the content. Polymarket bought a huge reach. The bill for what it contained is still to come.
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