Image credit: Source: Genius Sports newsroom. Never imply stock depicts the actual event.
Genius Sports signed Polymarket as a data and streaming client on 4 August, then signed Kalshi a day later, matching the same neutral-supplier move Sportradar made in June and confirming that both incumbent sports-data suppliers now sell to every side of America's prediction market fight. The Polymarket deal covers official data for settling event contracts plus exclusive US streaming rights to Serie A. The Kalshi deal adds real-time data across the Premier League, Serie A, Liga MX, Argentina's Primera División and Ligue 1, alongside integrity services and information-sharing.
A third deal, with Polymarket and Mexico's Liga MX specifically, makes Polymarket that league's exclusive US prediction market partner, with Genius supplying the underlying data. Three contracts in a week, two prediction market venues, one supplier now embedded in the settlement layer of both.
The rivalry that makes this notable
Genius and Sportradar have spent a decade racing each other for the same league contracts, most visibly in 2021 when Genius beat the incumbent Sportradar for the NFL's official data rights in a six-year, $120 million deal, ending Sportradar's run as the league's supplier. That history makes it striking that both companies have now reached the identical conclusion about prediction markets in the same two months: pick no side, sell to all of them, and let Kalshi and Polymarket fight over market share while the data bill comes due regardless of who wins.
"Prediction markets are emerging as an important new way for fans to engage with live sports," said Sean Conroy, Genius Sports' EVP of Rights and Partnerships, announcing the Polymarket deal. A day later, framing the Kalshi agreement, he said prediction markets "will scale on a foundation of trusted, fast and accurate data, reliable technology and robust integrity services," the same infrastructure argument Genius has made to sportsbooks for years, now redirected at a category regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than state gambling commissions.
Kalshi's head of sports partnerships, Adam Barrick, put the demand side of the trade plainly: "As the prediction market ecosystem continues to expand at a rapid pace, the use of official data and integrity services is more important than ever." Polymarket's Ari Borod, the company's president of sports business development, called the streaming and data package foundational to "the long-term development of sports prediction markets," language that echoes what he told the Yankees weeks later when Polymarket bought stadium signage at Yankee Stadium, a sponsorship-side land grab running on a parallel track to the data deals.
Streaming is the part Sportradar didn't sell
The Sportradar-Kalshi and Sportradar-Polymarket deals were data, odds and integrity products, the same menu Sportradar sells sportsbooks. Genius went further by attaching exclusive Serie A streaming rights to the Polymarket contract, a bundle that gives Polymarket users a reason to watch inside the platform rather than just trade on it. That is a meaningfully different pitch: Sportradar is selling infrastructure, Genius is selling attention. Genius has the media inventory to make that trade because of its $1.2 billion acquisition of Legend, the sports and gaming media network it bought earlier this year, and its habit of extracting more value from the same underlying rights by repricing them for new buyers rather than just renewing them for old ones.
Whether that streaming bundle survives contact with regulators is a separate question. Prediction markets remain legally contested in multiple states, and Kalshi's fight with Illinois over whether its sports contracts are gambling products in disguise is still working through the courts. A data and streaming supplier does not need that fight resolved in Kalshi's favour to get paid. It needs the fight to keep happening, because both incumbents and challengers in it are buying the same infrastructure from the same handful of suppliers.
The deals landed inside an earnings beat
Genius disclosed the Kalshi deal alongside second-quarter results on 6 August that beat its own guidance on both lines: $196 million in group revenue against a guided $185 million, and $53 million of adjusted EBITDA against a guided $45 million, a 26.9% margin. The company raised its full-year revenue guidance to $1.005-1.025 billion and said the beat reflected "early Legend synergies, strong execution across the combined Media business and incremental contribution from prediction markets," language that treats Kalshi and Polymarket as an already-paying line item rather than a future bet. Genius did not break out how much of the quarter came from prediction markets specifically, but framed the category as opening "an entirely new avenue for growth" alongside a core betting-data business it said continues to outperform.
Sportsbooks watch two rivals hedge the same bet
For operators who view prediction markets as a structural threat to their parlay business rather than a niche curiosity, the fact that Genius and Sportradar both moved to supply the threat rather than fight it is the more important signal than either individual contract. Data suppliers have no reason to prefer a sportsbook's survival over a prediction market's success; they profit from transaction volume, not license type. If Kalshi or Polymarket eventually displaces meaningful sportsbook handle, the two companies selling the data that runs both categories do not lose that revenue, they just relabel it.
Two rivals, the same bet, no losing side
Genius Sports and Sportradar have competed for every major league contract for a decade. On prediction markets, for now, they have reached the same answer: sell to everyone, and let the operators figure out who wins.