In the first nine months of 2021, DraftKings spent $703 million on sales and marketing, $303.7 million of it in the third quarter alone, and Flutter had already pushed past $1 billion in marketing by 30 June that year, per Front Office Sports. That was the era of the $1,000 risk-free bet, the celebrity spokesman every four minutes, and the promo that looked free until you read the rollover. Anyone who bet through it remembers how it ended: the bonuses shrank, the hold on parlays grew, and the ads kept coming anyway.
Five years on, the same playbook is being run by a different set of companies. The week of 7 September 2026 gave us LeBron James, Derek Jeter and Eli Manning in a 60-second Polymarket spot, Sydney Sweeney in a near-nude Novig ad, and a fresh round of "prediction markets are eating the sportsbooks" headlines. If you already trade on Kalshi or Polymarket, or you have been weighing them against your book, our earlier piece on Kalshi and Polymarket alternatives for betting explains how the exchanges got their federal licences. This one is about the money behind the ads, and what it costs the person on the other end of the screen.
The bill for a week of celebrity
Polymarket has not disclosed what it paid LeBron. Northeast Times describes it as a "multimillion-dollar partnership push" and lists the supporting cast: Spike Lee, Sue Bird, Rajon Rondo, Reggie Bush, Richard Sherman, Alexandra Daddario, John Leguizamo and Craig Robinson (source). iGaming Business notes the director was Peter Berg and that production "likely reached millions" given the names involved (source). Novig's arrangement is structured differently: CEO Jacob Fortinsky told Front Office Sports that Sweeney is an equity holder who "helped craft" the sports-only positioning, which means she is paid in upside rather than, or as well as, cash (source).
What the spend bought is easier to count. Polymarket's ad passed 15.5 million views and took the number one slot among free finance apps on the App Store on 8 September, above Kalshi, PayPal and Venmo (iGaming Business). Novig's ad cleared 11 million views on X and 40 million on Instagram, and Google searches for the brand rose 1,100% on the previous month (Front Office Sports). Those are acquisition numbers, and acquisition is the whole game in September.
Why the books are matching the spend
Because the exchanges are taking real handle, not just headlines. Kalshi posted $41 billion in notional volume in July 2026, up 5,400% year on year, per Legal Sports Report. Front Office Sports puts total prediction market volume at a record $15.9 billion for the most recent week, up 16%, with Kalshi at 82% share, Polymarket at 9% and Novig at 2%. And H2 Gambling Capital, reported by Covers, now projects NFL sportsbook handle of $31.4 billion this season, down 0.8%, the first decline in nine years of legal betting, with prediction market consumer handle running at 8 to 11% of sportsbook handle in competitive states.
There is a twist in that H2 breakdown that the ads never mention. Kalshi and Polymarket take customers from 18; sportsbooks and Novig hold the line at 21 (FishDuck). Self-excluded bettors, people who asked their state to lock them out of sportsbooks, can open an exchange account without tripping a single check. A chunk of the "growth" is a customer base the books were not allowed to serve.
Who actually pays for LeBron
You do, eventually; the only question is the route. A sportsbook funds its ads through hold. At -110 (1.91) both sides, each side implies 110 / 210 = 52.4%; 52.4% + 52.4% = 104.8%, so the book keeps 4.8 / 104.8, about 4.5% of every balanced dollar. That 4.5% paid for every 2021 commercial you can still hum. An exchange funds its ads through fees and spreads. On a contract priced $0.62 to buy "yes" and $0.40 to buy "no", the market is quoting 102% and the 2 cents in the middle is the effective vig before any trading fee. Novig says it charges no commission "at the moment", CEO Fortinsky's exact words to RotoWire, which is not the same as saying it never will. Somebody has to pay Sydney Sweeney's dividend.
The 2021 lesson for bettors was that acquisition spend and product quality move in opposite directions once the growth phase ends. Flutter's own numbers show it: promo spend as a share of volume is already back up to 5.4% because the exchanges forced it there, and Legal Sports Report cites an Optimove survey of 926 NFL bettors in which 64% plan to use at least two sportsbooks this season and 60% intend to trade event contracts. Line-shopping across books and exchanges is no longer an edge-case habit; it is what the median customer says they will do.
The backlash that arrived faster than in 2021
Sportsbook ads took years to draw serious pushback. These took days. Australian four-time Olympic champion swimmer Ariarne Titmus, who retired in October 2025, posted on Instagram: "I can't describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this," and asked "how do we live in a world where monetising a woman's body and sexualising women's sport is still a thing?" (ABC News). Gymnast Gracie Kramer answered with a training reel: "idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sport looks like." Sweeney replied without words, reposting nude portraits of athletes from ESPN's Body Issue. Novig did not respond to Front Office Sports about the athletes, and Fortinsky said more Sweeney spots are on the way.
Polymarket's problem is less about taste and more about who is in the ad. Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing called the cast "a who's who of disappointing sellouts" and wrote that "prediction markets are ripe for corruption and predatory behavior" (via Yahoo Sports). The Philadelphia Inquirer points out the NBA has no rule against an active player endorsing a prediction market, while the NFL and PGA Tour ban such deals outright (Inquirer). Polymarket declined to give the paper details of the deal.
The 2021 wave ended with fewer promos and a lot of limited accounts. Nobody knows yet how the 2026 wave ends, but the ads are already bigger, the athletes are already angrier, and the regulators are already in court. Enjoy the free commissions while they last.
Sources: Front Office Sports (2021 spend), Front Office Sports (Novig ad), Northeast Times, iGaming Business, Legal Sports Report, Covers (H2), FishDuck, RotoWire, Novig press release, CFTC, PR Newswire (QCEX), Courthouse News, ABC News, Awful Announcing via Yahoo, Philadelphia Inquirer, Wikipedia (Titmus).
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