FILE: San Francisco Giants players stand for the national anthem before the game against the Colorado Rockies at Oracle Park in San Francisco on Aug. 15, 2026.
FILE: San Francisco Giants players stand for the national anthem before the game against the Colorado Rockies at Oracle Park in San Francisco on Aug. 15, 2026.
The San Francisco Giants made another strong addition to their roster this week: Kalshi, the first federally regulated financial exchange and prediction market in the United States, where users can trade on the outcomes of real-world future events! It’s like betting, but not, you see. It’s Kalshi! Partnering with one of the most iconic teams in baseball, the Giants. A perfect match!
I’m sorry, I just figured that with all the money Kalshi is likely throwing the Giants’ way, maybe I’d get in on the action if they just read that opening paragraph. My DMs are open, Kalshi.
It’s not surprising on its face that the Giants and several other MLB teams are getting into bed with Kalshi, another addition to the long list of gambling (sorry, “trading”) platforms that have infiltrated the sport. PrizePicks is already the team’s “official daily fantasy sports partner,” and you can’t watch a game on TV without being inundated with ads for DraftKings or FanDuel. The amount of money flowing from these organizations seems practically infinite.
The Giants, of course, are in the business of making money, and business is good, even while the on-field product hurtles toward what could be the worst record in the franchise’s 143-year history. They don’t seem to be hurting for attendance, currently eighth in all of MLB in the average crowd size per game. Their theme nights covering everything from Hello Kitty to adult fantasy-romance novels about dragon riders are as popular as ever — and that’s before the supposed “largest special event ever” comes on Thursday with a Pokémon crossover. Their flagship retail store is impossible to navigate on most game days. A partnership with Kalshi makes sense if you consider the Giants are out to make every dollar they can in a year when the actual baseball has been putrid.
This particular partnership hits a little different, though, for a few reasons. There’s the matter of getting in bed with another gambling (sorry, “trading”) company when the team already has its deal with PrizePicks. How many gambling (sorry, “trading”) sites do they need to advertise at Oracle, exactly? Is that really the industry they want to relentlessly push onto their fanbase, especially kids? There’s a certain irony to so many of those ads showing up at a ballpark that honors Willie Mays, considering he was banned from MLB for almost six years for simply taking a job as a casino ambassador after retirement.
Another thing that doesn’t sit right about this deal is that on its face, it’s about the most naked, shameless cash grab the Giants have made in recent memory. The Cruise patches were one thing, but this is something else. In the San Francisco Chronicle, there’s a quote from the team’s vice president of partnerships, Steve Tseng, that encapsulates this perfectly. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
Referring to concerns about gambling addiction and promoting 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.”
So, just to be clear, the Giants took those concerns very, very seriously, then threw up their hands and said, “Oh well!” and took the check. Got it. Very ethical. It’s as soulless as the attempted cash grab in my opening paragraph.
Cincinnati Reds pitcher Chase Burns throws against the San Francisco Giants during a baseball game in San Francisco on Aug. 24, 2026.
Cincinnati Reds pitcher Chase Burns throws against the San Francisco Giants during a baseball game in San Francisco on Aug. 24, 2026.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why the Giants feel like a totally different organization from their dynasty years, but the feeling is there, like the splinter in your mind driving you mad from “The Matrix.” There’s just a different feel around the team, a different energy and a different connection to the fanbase. To many, they’ve become a corporation hell-bent on making money, with winning ballgames increasingly becoming an afterthought. Is that fair or even true? Probably not. But man, it’s getting harder and harder to think otherwise after reading a quote like that.
The Giants used to stand for something to their fans, but that all feels gone now. What was once the class of Bay Area franchises has become an inept outfit stumbling from one controversy to the next while putting an inferior product on the field and still charging premium prices to experience it. Except for the one discounted beer day coming up, of course.
But they are making money, and I don’t fault them for it, believe it or not. They should make as much money as they can. I’d almost guarantee that no Giants fan would care how much money the ownership group was making, or how many downtown theaters the Giants were buying, if they felt the team was investing enough of it back into the roster to compete.
But they aren’t, and we’ve been left with a very rich team grabbing every dollar they can get as the club wraps up perhaps its worst year ever. The Kalshi deal is just the chalky icing on the dry cake. It’s more money for the Giants, sure. Does it matter if it’s from a questionable source? Of course not. It’s money. There will be a plethora of mid-tier relievers coming off catastrophic arm injuries for the Giants to sign next winter, and they’ll need every bit of that payoff.
But can the Giants sustain their level of fan support if they keep going this way? Hard to say. It’s a real gamble (sorry, “trade”).
— SF Giants make 5 trades in final 24 hours before MLB trade deadline
— SF Giants-KNBR relationship is fraying: 'Never been this bad'
— Giants suspend Harrison Bader's pay following scooter crash
— Krukow delivers impassioned monologue defending SF Giants' Pride Night
Full SF Giants coverage
For all of our Bay Area sports coverage, sign up for The Catch newsletter.