Polymarket announced on Tuesday that it will open “New York’s first free grocery store,” in a clear reference to freshly elected New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plans to open low-cost city-run grocery stores, with a focus on food deserts in every borough. The confusing PR stunt got the new Mayor’s attention, and he was quick to respond on social media.
https://x.com/NYCMayor/status/2019105073423327680
In a follow-up post to Mamdani’s response, Polymarket said that they would love to have the Mayor join them and claimed that they “have tried reaching out to connect.”
Of course, this “free grocery store” is not a permanent establishment, like the ones that Mamdani is working on building. Polymarket says it has signed a lease, but so far, the event seems to only be a five-day pop-up. No other details are available, including where this “Polymarket” will be.
Weird enough, Polymarket wasn’t the only prediction market offering free groceries to New Yorkers this week. Competitor Kalshi paid for $50 worth of free groceries per person at a Westside Market location in the East Village from 12 pm to 3 pm on Tuesday.
The publicity stunts are, undeniably, meant to be a marketing move. Offering New Yorkers free groceries in the midst of an affordability crisis is engineered to build positive connotations with the brands, which have gotten significant bad press in the past few weeks, from accusations of insider betting by government officials to a recent analysis that found that prediction market bettors are losing money faster than traditional gambling app users.
Plus, announcing the attention-grabbing promotion only days before a major betting event like the Super Bowl is awfully timely.
But there is more that makes the timing curious.
Prediction markets have been in muddy legal waters nationwide. Trump’s election last year cleared a path to legality for both platforms, but prediction markets still face heavy scrutiny over the ways they operate. Kalshi alone is fending off nineteen federal lawsuits.
One of the key battleground states for both prediction markets has been New York. Back in late October, the New York State Gaming Commission accused Kalshi of running an illegal betting operation. Roughly two weeks later, in November, New York State Rep. Clyde Vanel introduced the ORACLE Act, a bill that would prohibit prediction markets from offering certain bets in New York. The ban would include any bets on politics and sports, both of which are common use cases of prediction markets.
Polymarket’s vice president of global growth, William LeGate, said in a post on X that the idea had been in the works since November.
Then on Monday, only a day before Kalshi’s announcement, New York Attorney General Letitia James published a consumer alert against prediction markets, and warned the industry that “advertisement and promotion of unlicensed sports wagering violate New York’s gambling laws and could be subject to civil and criminal liability.”
“Prediction markets may appear as modern, high-tech platforms for speculation or ‘forecasting,’ but in practice, many operate as unregulated gambling without the basic protections New York consumers both deserve and expect from properly licensed operators,” the letter said.
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