The Giants have added another revenue stream to a season already defined by the club squeezing every last dollar out of its brand: Kalshi, the first federally regulated financial exchange and prediction market in the United States.
Kalshi allows users to trade on the outcomes of real-world future events. The Giants’ partnership with the company is the latest in a growing line of gambling - or, as these platforms prefer, “trading” - ties around baseball. San Francisco already has PrizePicks as its “official daily fantasy sports partner,” while DraftKings and FanDuel ads are a constant presence on TV broadcasts.
That’s the backdrop for a deal that feels especially blunt. The Giants are in the business of making money, and this is a franchise that has still drawn well despite a brutal season.
They rank eighth in MLB in average attendance, and their ballpark promotions keep landing, from Hello Kitty theme nights to adult fantasy-romance novels about dragon riders. Thursday’s Pokémon crossover is being billed as the “largest special event ever,” and the team’s flagship retail store is difficult to get through on most game days.
But this partnership lands differently because it adds another gambling-related brand to a mix that already includes PrizePicks. That raises obvious questions about how many of these companies the Giants want promoted at Oracle, and what message that sends to fans, including kids. There’s also the irony of those ads appearing in a ballpark that honors Willie Mays, who was banned from MLB for almost six years after taking a job as a casino ambassador following his retirement.
The clearest window into the team’s thinking came from Giants vice president of partnerships Steve Tseng, in comments to the San Francisco Chronicle. Addressing concerns about gambling addiction and the promotion of gambling to children, Tseng said, “We think about a lot and very seriously. Then we came to believe that it’s going to happen with or without you, so if we can kind of control it a little bit on our narrative, I think that’s a good thing.”
The franchise has made money before, and it will keep doing it. But this one feels like a particularly naked cash grab, another sign of how far the organization has drifted from the identity it once had. What used to be one of the Bay Area’s class franchises now feels, to many, like a company chasing every possible dollar while the baseball itself slides.
That disconnect is what makes the Kalshi deal sting. If the Giants were investing enough of that money back into the roster, the reaction might be different. Instead, the club is wrapping up what could be its worst year ever while still charging premium prices and collecting new sponsorship dollars.
For now, the check clears. The question is how long fans keep buying in if this is the direction the Giants keep heading.
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