Gambling Site Begs Taylor Swift For ‘Investing’ Endorsement

The betting platform Polymarket has reached out to Taylor Swift to apparently seek endorsement of its gambling product.

Polymarket, which offers gambling on Swift’s new album “The Life of a Showgirl,” sent Swift messages on Instagram. The company’s marketing lead, William LeGate, posted a screenshot of the messages to X.

The messages said: “Gm [good morning] Taylor. Have you heard of Polymarket? It allows your fans to share in your success by investing in how many album sales you’ll do.”

A later post showed Polymarket attempting to invite Swift to its affiliate program.

Harmless Gambling Content?

Obviously, Taylor Swift is not going to endorse Polymarket or any other gambling website. While other stars like LeBron James decided to take gambling industry money, Swift is above this. It’s also highly unlikely she would respond in any way to Polymarket.

We’ll assume Polymarket is smart enough to realize this.

Polymarket was using the messages to Swift as social media content. In Gambling Harm’s view, it’s cheap and cringeworthy content, but it’s also extremely reckless.

The continued promotion of gambling as “investing” is dangerous regarding problem gambling. Moreover, the notion that betting on her album sales constitutes fan support is ludicrous.

Teenagers can gamble on Polymarket, making the “investing” framing even more problematic.

Could Trolling Taylor Swift Work?

You could view Polymarket’s attempt to get Swift’s attention as a troll. 

If enough people are gambling on Swift’s album under the guise of “investing,” maybe Swift would come out with a warning of some kind on the risks associated with gambling?

A Swift condemnation would be a massive win for Polymarket. It would give the Swift-related gambling markets more oxygen. That might be Polymarket’s dream scenario here.

But Swift is too smart to fall victim to this desperate marketing ploy.

Bigger Picture

There is a massive public relations push by the prediction betting sector to argue that its product is not gambling.

A core reason why is that numerous states have fought back in court, arguing that prediction-style sports betting violates their respective gambling statutes. Moreover, no U.S. state permits gambling on anything related to Taylor Swift.

More cynically, using euphemisms for gambling makes a habit-forming product appear safer.

To be fair to prediction markets, the U.S. casino industry doesn’t call its product gambling either. The reckless “gaming” label is the original euphemism, which can contribute to gambling-related harms.