UFC Taps Polymarket to Add Live Betting Signals to Fight Coverage

Polymarket has signed a multi-year agreement with TKO Group Holdings to become the official prediction market partner for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Zuffa Boxing, bringing real-time predictions on live fight broadcasts.

A UFC blog place Thursday said Polymarket will add a layer of data-driven storytelling that tracks fan sentiment in real-time, including a “Fan Prediction Scoreboard” that converts crowd expectations into a live reading of the audience’s changing pulse during each event.

Polymarket is a blockchain-based prediction platform where people trade on the outcome of real-world events. The company’s founder and CEO Shayne Coplan said the partnership will give fans a “new way to be part of the action — not just watching the results, but watching the world’s expectations evolve with each round.”

The UFC and Polymarket will also launch a social series highlighting potential post-fight bouts on UFC’s main platforms to generate debate that Polymarket will turn into topical markets.

Ariel Emanuel, TKO’s executive chairman and CEO, added that fans could turn “passive viewing into active participation.”

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The rise of prediction markets

Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, which allow users to bet on everything that US President Donald Trump will do. forgive to the price of Bitcoin on a particular dayit became especially popular after the 2024 US presidential election.

Since then, they have developed rapidly. On November 6, Google announced integrates Kalshi and Polymarket in its search results as part of its AI-powered update, which allows users to see real-time probabilities for future market events.

Polymarket also teamed up fantasy sports platform PrizePicks to bring its event markets to the PrizePicks app, which allows users to make predictions on sports, entertainment and cultural results.

The prediction markets faced a backlash this month. A Columbia University Study he said that about 60% of Polymarket’s business appeared to be wash trading and that a quarter of its total volume in the last three years may have come from artificial trades. The study was not peer reviewed.

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