The passionate online community known as gambling Twitter has long been an intense battleground, full of bettors, punters, scammers and trolls.
For years, bettors and bettors have mercilessly hammered each other as they anxiously await the next post from a small college beat writer or a WNBA player to post a tell-all emoji. Meanwhile, scammers, promising insider information and guaranteed locks, lurk behind random anonymous accounts ready to take advantage of the gullible, and trolls are ready to attack anyone who doesn’t meet their standards.
People absolutely love it. And, now, with the widespread adoption of legal betting spreading rapidly, gambling Twitter is on the rise.
In February, according to Twitter, the top hashtag involved in sports betting tweets for the Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals wasn’t #ramsnation or #whodey — it was #GamblingTwitter.
“Hashtag gaming Twitter is a thing,” Mike Dupree, director of media and entertainment for Twitter, told ESPN. “I don’t think we can pin it down, but it’s certainly something that has its own identity and community, which has been great to see.”
Twitter, for the first time, is releasing internal data and commenting on the proliferation of sports betting content on the social media platform. The data was collected by Twitter Insiders and comes from a sample of individuals aged 18 and over who have bet on sports in the past 12 months, live in a state where sports betting is legal and use at least one platform of social media.
The study found that seven out of 10 bettors surveyed are on Twitter and that conversation on the social media platform drives bettors to bet more often and place larger bets. Additionally, according to data provided to ESPN by Twitter:
• 62% of punters on Twitter place bets every week and spend 15% more on bets every year compared to betting on other social media platforms.
• 72% of bettors check Twitter to follow the status of their live bets after they have been placed, and 65% said they are more motivated to place a bet on a big event that everyone is talking about social media.
• 51% of Twitter bettors started betting less than two years ago.
“We’ve already seen more people tweeting about sports betting this year than in all of 2021, and the NFL season hasn’t even started,” Dupree said.
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How bookmakers use Twitter
Ed Salmons, a veteran Las Vegas bookbinder of nearly 30 years, was introduced to Twitter by a colleague around 2009, and after discovering TweetDeck—a platform that lets you create multiple curated feeds on the same screen—he realized how valuable was the tool can be for bookbinders. Seven years later, Salmons used Twitter to put his sportsbook in an advantageous position in a Thanksgiving night game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
On Monday, Nov. 21, 2016, Salmons and the team in the Las Vegas SuperBook had just set the opening lines in Week 12 of the NFL season when a Colts writer tweeted about Indianapolis quarterback Andrew Luck.
Luck had come up the day before against the Tennessee Titans, but ended the game. The tweet from the Colts beat writer wasn’t direct, but Salmons said he read between the lines and came away believing it was unlikely Luck would play Thursday against the Steelers.
With most sportsbooks sitting on the Steelers -3, Salmons moved the SuperBook line to -7. Some competitive sportsbooks reacted by taking the game off the charts, while other outlets stood firm at Pittsburgh -3. In the meantime, bettors started betting on the Colts at +7 on the SuperBook, thinking they were getting a bargain on the spread.
“In a situation like that, when you see it and you know, it’s good that the book is basically trying to move forward, because we knew that line was going to be on the other side of the seventh once it came out,” Salmons said. “So we got a bunch of money for the Colts, and then the news broke.”
With Luck out, Pittsburgh closed to an 8-point lead. The Steelers beat the Colts 28-7.
Salmons constantly monitors his TweetDeck these days, looking for news. He often puts the names of quarterbacks into the search function to keep track of injury statuses and also looks for live weather reports. At the same time, he knows he has to be careful not to be fooled by Twitter scammers, who get their kicks by building profiles that replicate those of mainstream journalists and tricking people with fake news.
“I think at some point everyone has been fooled by fake accounts,” Salmons said. “To me, you can get one shot to be wrong and then, after that, you have to verify that what you’re seeing is actually true. I think for the most part, we’ve done a pretty good job of fine with that.”
Bettors should also be wary of scammers on Twitter. For example, accounts claiming to have inside information about “fixed games” regularly posted in betting-related threads, asking for money in exchange for details.
“Where there are bad actors on Twitter, we continue to put tools in place to ensure a safe betting experience on the platform,” Dupree said. “One thing to start with is before placing a bet based on a Twitter tip, sports bettors should take a second look at the account and ask if it’s a reliable source of information. Has it been verified? Have you looked at the bio of their, past Tweets? There’s some work we need to do as punters to make sure we’re following legitimate and reliable sources.”
Tip: Anyone who claims to have information about a fixed game and is selling it for $50 on Twitter is not likely to be a legitimate and reliable source.
How punters use Twitter
Data released by Twitter shows that bettors of all levels are using the platform to help with their odds. Some eagerly seek the latest information; others simply seek to follow the picks of popular betting personalities and discuss the action as the games are played. Even sophisticated betting syndicates rely heavily on Twitter.
Right Angle Sports (RAS) is one of the most influential betting syndicates in the US market. It includes 10 disabled people located in different areas of the country. As part of their handicapping routine, they closely monitor social media for news, and when RAS bets, the lines move immediately and often dramatically at sportsbooks around the world. Some of those line-moving bets may be fueled in part by, most notably, an emoji posted by a player on Twitter.
“One of the weirdest skills we’ve acquired as a team in the last few years is decoding emoji,” RAS’s Edward Golden, who prefers to go by just Edward, told ESPN. “I can’t tell you how many times a month one of our team members will post a player tweet and it’s just an emoji. It could be one of those blushing face emojis. Or a brain exploding emoji. Or a blue heart. But whatever, emojis mean different things coming from different players. We’ll have times when a WNBA player, for example, won’t post anything but one of those angry faces . And you start thinking, “Oh, man, is she out? Was she hurt? And then someone on our team will say, ‘No, she does this all the time. She’s probably just complaining about a delayed flight.'”
Needless to say, a lot more goes into RAS betting than emoji translations. RAS handicappers are quick to spot — and appreciate — breaking news, although Edward says these days information seems to regularly hit the betting market before it hits Twitter. But social media remains a valuable tool for RAS, not in the way one might think.
“Every current member of the team — every single one — we found online through some form of social media,” Edward said. “Back then, you’d find undiscovered talent on betting forums and chat rooms. These days, it’s all on Twitter.
“There are so many obscure or under-capitalized startups doing great work who clearly have an edge and yet no one knows who they are despite their obvious potential,” he added. “We’re always looking for that person. Always. We’ve been fortunate to hire some serious talent using Twitter, and we’ve seen people grow into integral parts of our team making us better.”
The rise of sports betting on Twitter
Sports betting is among Twitter’s top growth areas, growing 300% over the past four years and making it comparable to growth categories like cryptocurrencies and NFTs, according to Dupree.
“[Sports betting] it may not have the overall, the history and the scale because it’s more of a recent phenomenon, but we’ve seen the sports betting conversation reflect a lot of the overgrowth over the last couple of years,” Dupree said.
The explosion in popularity of sports betting on Twitter coincides with the widespread expansion of legal sports books in the United States. In 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled that all states can choose to authorize sports betting. Since the ruling, 31 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have launched legal betting markets. More than $147 billion has been wagered at legal sports books in the U.S. over the past four years, generating nearly $10.6 billion in taxable revenue, according to the American Gaming Association.
Sportsbooks are leveraging Twitter’s influence for branding purposes, building large followings by featuring unlikely hits and advertising special offers to bettors such as increased odds. Sportsbooks also use their partnerships with professional sports leagues like Major League Baseball and the NBA to post highlights with a betting spin. FanDuel’s sportsbook account @FDSportsbook has more than 214,000 followers; DraftKings’ @DKSportsbook has more than 158,000 followers.
“Countless sports fans and bettors are passionately researching and interacting in real-time on Twitter, which underscores the platform’s effectiveness for DraftKings’ customer growth and retention strategies,” said Stephanie Sherman, DraftKings chief marketing officer.
Twitter’s study found that the most popular type of bet was against the spread, followed by paralays and money line bets. Bettors surveyed said increased odds – where sportsbooks offer enhanced odds on specific bets – and the fear of losing a bet that everyone is discussing were motivating factors when deciding to bet.
“Twitter has been referred to as the biggest sports bar in the world. You want to share the excitement with your friends,” said Dupree. “Well, you could almost think that Twitter is becoming the biggest sports book in the world, not in terms of betting, but where people come to talk about the action and track their bets.”
