Polymarket Reportedly Fires CMO Amid Mounting Regulatory Scrutiny

By Amara Osei

Polymarket has reportedly fired its chief marketing officer, Matthew Moddaber, in the wake of a string of damaging incidents tied to the prediction-market platform, The New York Post reported Friday, Oct. 23. Polymarket did not respond to Adweek's request for confirmation or comment at the time of publishing, so the report remains just that — a report.

Moddaber had served as marketing chief since 2024 and, per his LinkedIn profile, was the company's 11th employee. He co-founded the photo-sharing app BeReal and Salad House, described as "the first fast casual salad chain in Milan." Neither he nor the company has confirmed the circumstances of his departure, and it remains unclear whether the platform's accumulated bad PR caused it.

What did the Wall Street Journal investigation find?

In June, a Wall Street Journal investigation concluded that Polymarket had hired a small army of college students to film themselves making money off trades that were not real. Two senators urged the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal regulator of derivatives markets, to investigate the videos, calling the reportedly fake clips — which amounted to fake marketing — "deeply troubling" and warranting "immediate scrutiny."

That was not the platform's first encounter with the CFTC. In September, additional Journal reporting prompted the commission to investigate scammers placing bets using stolen debit-card numbers. U.S. compliance officer Andrew Clifford resigned over fraud concerns.

How long has the regulator been watching?

Since 2022, when the CFTC determined that bets on the platform "constitute swaps under the CFTC's jurisdiction" and must comply with federal trading laws. That same year, Polymarket settled for $1.4 million and agreed to comply with CFTC regulations. The settlement did not end the scrutiny — or the allegations of suspicious marketing.

On September 24 of this year, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James sued Polymarket for running "an illegal, unlicensed gambling operation that exposes New Yorkers — including those under the legal gambling age of 21 — to serious personal and financial risk."

A month earlier, the New York City Council opened an investigation into the marketing practices of four prediction-market platforms — Coinbase, Gemini Titan, Kalshi and Polymarket — over what it called "deceptive and predatory marketing practices."

"Prediction markets aggressively entice consumers to bet and wager on sports, politics, culture, weather, and pretty much anything. We refuse to let New Yorkers, especially our young people, become collateral damage," Council member Menin said in a statement.

What did the Harvard study allege?

In April, Harvard researchers published a study of cases "in which traders appear to have exploited material nonpublic information on Polymarket and Kalshi, spanning events from the joint U.S.-Israel February 2026 strike on Iran to pre-announcement trading in Taylor Swift's engagement." Analyzing 210,000 cases, the researchers found a win rate of 69.9% — "well in excess of chance" — producing "$143 million in aggregate anomalous profit."

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that 50 accounts had placed winning bets on President Trump announcing a ceasefire with Iran just minutes before he did. That followed an unidentified trader's $400,000 winning bet on the ouster of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, placed hours before the U.S. Army's Delta Force extracted him. A caveat applies: correlation is not proof of insider trading, and the Harvard study itself says traders "appear" to have exploited nonpublic information.

Can high-gloss campaigns fix this?

Polymarket has kept spending. Earlier in October, it released its first U.S. political campaign ahead of the midterms, directed by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow.

Brand strategist David Deal sees the limits of that approach. "Polymarket needs to recognize that achieving visibility is not the same as earning trust," he said. "The company has a viable path to credibility, but it needs to address questions about its integrity that go well beyond marketing."

A new celebrity-directed campaign will not answer regulators' questions, and until Polymarket addresses the integrity issues documented by the Journal, Harvard and the CFTC, every marketing hire — and firing — will read as symptom rather than strategy.