Peruse Twitter at nearly any hour of the day and you could be inundated with tweets about sports betting.
On Wednesday, for instance, two-time golf major winner John Daly started trending after throwing the ceremonial first pitch at a St. Louis Cardinals game straight down Broadway for a strike. A click on Daly’s name in the trending section instantly turns up memes on the colorful golfer’s pitch from several sportsbooks, including industry heavyweights FanDuel, BetMGM, and Caesars.
John Daly is now -2000 to win the NL Cy Young 😂
📽️: @BallySportsMW | #MLBpic.twitter.com/YFiKS2zh8y
— FanDuel Sportsbook (@FDSportsbook) September 8, 2022
The content we didn't know we needed 💯
Absolute ⛽️ from John Daly's first pitchpic.twitter.com/49KxXs7rZP
— Caesars Sportsbook (@CaesarsSports) September 7, 2022
Some straight up cheese from John Daly 🔥
— BetMGM 🦁 (@BetMGM) September 8, 2022
John Daly walked away like he knew he threw the best pitch of the night 😂
— PointsBet Sportsbook (@PointsBetUSA) September 8, 2022
The witty memes can be entertaining and lighten the mood for sports fans on a dreary work commute or late at night when winding down from a stressful day. But when it comes to betting-related tweets, there are more than just memes on the latest happenings in the world of sports gambling. If looking for instantaneous info on obscure stats, same-game parlays, injury updates, anecdotes on withdrawal difficulties, unexpected bottlenecks on mobile apps, endless boosted-bet promotions, and much, much more, all you need to do is go to Twitter.
With the NFL regular season set to kick off Thursday night, Twitter seems to have cemented its position as the internet’s go-to spot for sports wagering. Internal data compiled by Twitter, which it released in a press release this week, suggests that the website is the preferred resource for sports bettors when it comes to informational sources used to place a sports bet, alongside broadcast websites (i.e. ESPN.com, FoxSports.com, CBSSports.com, NBCSports.com, etc.).
Sports bettors it surveyed also rank Twitter as the top place for staying up to speed on sports influencers’ opinions/predictions, injury reports/updates, team stats/records, lineups, Vegas odds, and other sports-related news, according to the data.
In terms of in-game betting, 72% of sports bettors check Twitter to follow the status of their live bets once they’ve been made, the social media site reports. The metrics are noteworthy as the first time Twitter has publicly released insights on its sports betting audience since the U.S. Supreme Court’s PASPA decision in May 2018.
“Twitter has long been called the world’s largest sports bar — the place where people all over the world come to talk about sports. Now it’s also becoming the world’s largest sportsbook … not in terms of taking wagers, but where people come to talk about the action and follow their bets,” Mike Dupree, Twitter’s director of media and entertainment, said in an email to Sports Handle.
Fear of missing out: The FOMO Effect
Of polled respondents, 7 of 10 sports bettors surveyed are on Twitter, and 33% of bettors on Twitter say they wouldn’t make as many wagers if it wasn’t for the social media network. In one interesting stat, about 65% of bettors on Twitter are primarily motivated to engage in sports betting to participate in a major event that everyone is talking about. The phenomenon is referred to as “fear of missing of out” — more commonly known as FOMO.
Over a 15-month period through March 2022, BetMGM received 496.5 million impressions, according to Hashtag Sports, up more than 1000% from the year before. BetMGM placed as a finalist in the Hashtag Sports Awards for most engaging Twitter presence, joining the NBA, Seattle Mariners, and the Golden State Warriors in a crowded field. During the previous year, BetMGM saw its Twitter follower count skyrocket to 225,000 from 50,000, soaring past top competitors FanDuel and DraftKings.
Twitter is the home of sports betting conversation — featuring the latest info, player insights, and game analysis.
Football season is here, so learn how sports bettors rely on Twitter to (hopefully) win big — and how you can engage these valuable bettors on the timeline. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/asj48WRxqM
— Twitter Marketing (@TwitterMktg) September 8, 2022
The latter two, however, aren’t exactly struggling. There is evidence that even sports outside the so-called “Big Four” (the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL) generate a large following on Twitter, primarily because of the reach of sports betting. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago, 30 social media posts from DraftKings’ partnership with Turner Broadcasting for The Match, a made-for-TV golf event, received 8.1 million digital impressions and 2.67 million video views. All told, the golf event ranked first on Twitter in sports trending topics on the day.
For the opening game of the NFL season, DraftKings is using Twitter to promote an early-win offer, where a bettor will receive a payout if his team takes a 7-point lead at any time in the game.
TOMORROW: Betting on the moneyline will never be the same.
With #EarlyWin, all you need is a 7-point lead for your moneyline bet to cash instantly!
Opt-in: https://t.co/YyIC8M3VT3 pic.twitter.com/tptWK6mbos
— DraftKings Sportsbook (@DKSportsbook) September 7, 2022
The study sampled individuals who are 18 years of age or older, have bet on sports in the past 12 months, and live in a state where sports betting is legal. The respondents were broken into cohorts, with one made up of Twitter users who use at least one other social platform. Another group contained respondents who do not use Twitter, but who use at least one other social media platform.
“Through research we’ve done, we’re seeing that the timeline attracts a premium sports betting audience that is growing and has a direct influence on their betting decisions,” Dupree said. “In fact, we’ve already seen more people tweet about sports betting in 2022 than we did all last year, and the NFL season has yet to kick off.”
