Kalshi said it is investigating the matter after being contacted by Spotify.
Spotify has demanded that Kalshi and Polymarket remove its branding and explicitly stated that neither prediction market platform has a commercial partnership with the streaming company after detecting manipulated streaming activity that affected a betting market, according to Bloomberg.
The streaming giant discovered that more than 500,000 fake streams had artificially boosted Malcolm Todd’s song Earrings to the top ranks of its charts. However, before Spotify completed its fraud investigation and removed the artificial plays, the inflated data had already been used to determine the outcome of Kalshi’s June market predicting the most-streamed Spotify song in the US.
The contract attracted approximately $3 million in trading volume, and Todd was first declared among the winning outcomes.
After confirming the manipulation, Spotify contacted both Kalshi and Polymarket, requesting they remove Spotify’s logo and make clear that no partnership exists between the companies.
Kalshi is cooperating with Spotify and is actively investigating the matter, according to a spokesperson.
The case highlights growing concerns that prediction markets could encourage manipulation of the real-world data on which wagers are based, while Spotify said it continuously detects and removes artificial streams.
