Polymarket has reportedly been paying professional Brazilian Counter-Strike players between $20 and $500 per post to promote the prediction market on X, according to Counter-Strike news outlet Dust2.
Dust2 reported that players were being paid to comment on news events while mentioning Polymarket and sharing bets linked to the platform.
Polymarket currently lists 509 different Counter-Strike bets. Some of those markets have attracted between $1 million and $2 million in volume.
Robin Kool attacks AI-backed Polymarket promotion
Professional Counter-Strike player Robin Kool recently said he would block Polymarket promoters after an official Polymarket Counter-Strike account falsely claimed that he was in Paris with a Porsche.
Kool described the post as "digital cancer" and said people creating AI-sponsored Polymarket posts were "a fucking joke." In his X post, he wrote: "so we just lying and creating shit out of thin air, that's how low we're going and all the people sponsored doing AI slop tweets, what a fucking joke genuinely blocking you if i see any of this AI slop on my timeline, this is literal digital cancer."
Other users, the report said, described the $20 price per tweet as a way for professional players "to completely debase yourself… for a morally bankrupt gambling company."
Fake bets, restrictions, and prior scrutiny
Polymarket now lists 39 countries where it is restricted.
The report also pointed to earlier findings by The Wall Street Journal, which said Polymarket's sponsored promotional posts were mostly fake. The Journal found that influencers used a fake Polymarket website to create fake bets and show $900,000 in winnings.
If those bets had actually been placed, the Journal said, the outcome would have amounted to roughly $160,000 in losses.
It also found that so-called clippers, people who edit and share footage of those influencers online, were only paid if 60% of their audience was based in the US. Polymarket is not allowed to operate in the US.
Protos said it has contacted Polymarket for comment and will update its report if it receives a response.