You can’t predict baseball — but that’s never stopped anyone from trying.The bond between the sport and prediction markets has tightened over the last month, with seven different major-league teams formalizing sponsorships with a prediction market. On Tuesday, Kalshi announced partnerships with five major-league franchises: the Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants. They join the New York Mets and New York Yankees, who had earlier announced their own deals with Novig and Polymarket, respectively. Meanwhile, Kalshi is also reportedly in talks for a league-level deal.This is all happening at the same time that Congress is asking for more stringent regulations on the sport’s promotion of gambling and the state of New York is trying to upend the industry with a lawsuit. We reached out to several of the principals involved and industry experts to learn why this is happening now, what major-league teams and the companies get out of these deals, and how the landscape may evolve in the near future.Why are these sponsorships happening now?When Major League Baseball formed its official partnership with Polymarket before the season, it became more or less inevitable that teams would follow suit. A lot of organizations view partnerships with prediction markets similarly to those with sports betting companies, and they’re aware that the money doesn’t flow endlessly.“There’s a real explosion of spending, and once the customer acquisition race isn’t quite as heated, a lot of that spending becomes almost pointless,” said Danny Funt, author of “Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling.” “You have all these different players, and most customers aren’t using a bunch of platforms. They’re using one or two. So you want to spend a lot to be the one or two.”While there may not be a huge advantage to being the first team to announce this kind of deal, there is a significant financial edge in ensuring you’re not left out.“This is a category we’ve been tracking for quite some time,” said Lew Sherr, president of business operations for the Mets, whose deal with Novig was the first for a major-league club with a prediction market. “We were well aware of the process happening at the league level. … When the opportunity presented itself, we were well prepared to act on it.”Being first may have meant more to Novig than it would have to another, more publicly established prediction market like Kalshi or Polymarket.“We want to be cutting edge,” Novig senior vice president of growth Nikhil Panu said. “We know we’re newer to the market. Being able to be first movers on different things is important to us.”“They have a lot of catch-up to do,” sports gambling analyst Dustin Gouker said of Novig. “Being promoted by a team is a huge deal for someone that doesn’t have a ton of name recognition in the world right now.”Minor leaguer's first pro HR caught by his dadWhat do the prediction markets get out of the arrangement?Two main things: legitimacy and access to greater rewards for their VIP customers.“These team deals are about legitimacy,” Gouker said. “The team and the leagues are putting their backing that this is a good product that is fine. With all the angst about gambling or not gambling, legitimacy has a lot of currency.”“At a time when they’re really in legal limbo, when their claim to be something other than gambling is not persuading a lot of judges, two of the biggest franchises in sports giving them a stamp of approval is pretty significant,” said Funt of the initial deals with the Mets and Yankees.