According to a report on August 24th by Front Office Sports citing multiple sources, The Athletic and Kalshi are in advanced discussions regarding a sponsorship deal. The agreement has not yet been finalized. One source informed the outlet that since its deal with BetMGM expired earlier this year, The Athletic has been in talks with several betting and prediction market companies, although the names of other contenders were not disclosed. Representatives from both The Athletic and Kalshi declined to comment.
Oliver Darcy published his own report on the site Status, indicating that Kalshi is among the potential partners The Athletic is negotiating with. He wrote that any deal would pertain specifically to The Athletic's sports division, not the entire New York Times Co., but would still require approval from the parent company.
This differs from the previous agreement, which was explicitly exclusive and was struck when The Athletic was still an independent venture. Announced on January 28, 2021, BetMGM became The Athletic's exclusive sports betting partner in the U.S. The collaboration centered on a new content vertical called The Athletic Betting Hub, offering live odds, exclusive offers, and betting analysis in text, audio, and video formats—which is now defunct. The following year, The Times acquired The Athletic. Neither the 2021 press release nor any reports this week specified the duration of the agreement, with the information about its expiration based on anonymous sources in both instances.
The new potential partner is a different type of company than the previous one. BetMGM is a licensed sportsbook operator active in select states. Kalshi is a federally designated contract market that offers contracts on sports events, does not hold a gambling license from any state regulator, and claims federal commodities law supersedes state gambling laws. This position is currently being tested in court amid ongoing negotiations, including in the state where The Times is based: On July 31, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Kalshi, seeking to ban it from operating in the state and demanding $100,000 per unauthorized sports betting offering plus triple the profits gained.
CEO Tarek Mansour blamed the lawsuit on gambling industry lobbyists. In Utah, on August 4th, a federal judge granted the state's motion for summary judgment, fully rejecting the federal preemption argument. The issue is not settled against Kalshi everywhere: In April, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary injunction protecting the company from enforcement in New Jersey, and a ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is still pending.
None of this has slowed Kalshi's media expansion: On April 7th, Fox Corporation began integrating Kalshi's forecasts into its various media channels, joining CNN and CNBC. Fox did not include sports predictions in this initial launch, though it did not rule out adding them in the future, and separately stated it would not use Kalshi data for election coverage, where it has its own polling teams.
Advanced talks between Fox and Kalshi were reported in March, with integration starting about a month later—a timeline worth noting when considering the potential stage of current negotiations. Competitor Polymarket has gone further in print media: Since January, Dow Jones has been publishing its data in The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, and Investor's Business Daily under an exclusive partnership—as editorial information feeds, not sponsorships.
Kalshi and The Athletic have already collaborated on a smaller scale: the former sponsored content by the latter on TikTok during the World Cup. Front Office Sports also reported that The Athletic is in talks with the NFL to distribute content on the league's digital platforms and has already arranged to syndicate some of its material on NBA.com.
