X (formerly Twitter) is set to integrate sports betting statistics into its experience with a partnership with BetMGM. Fortune Magazine first reported news of the partnership on its website, revealing that X will now work with BetMGM to display statistics through its interface, with a link to BetMGM for the platform’s users to place bets.
The partnership is part of BetMGM’s continued expansion into social media. The MGM-owned sports betting app already has partnerships with Yahoo and YouTube and a direct partnership with X. The agreement comes with the launch of a new, viable competitor in the industry, ESPN BET.
BetMGM Could Secure Major Social Media Advantage
Currently, X serves as a vital source of all sports news. With news outlets and media houses using the platform to break stories, X allows sports fans to get a direct line to athletes, teams, and other significant figures in sports.
Accordingly, X is the go-to choice for sports fans, as it allows them to follow updates as they happen, almost in real-time. According to a 2022 report, sports fans tweeted a massive 3.7 billion times in 2021 alone.
Sports Conversation on X Continues to Grow Despite Hiccups
In 2022, the #WC2022 hashtag garnered 147 billion impressions, more than doubling the impression of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. With a solid and passionate fan base making up a large chunk of its total users, sports fans have persisted even after many users left after the Elon Musk takeover.
Lisa Delpy Neirotti, associate professor of sports management at George Washington University, believes that the real-time nature of X makes it the ideal platform for all sports. “If a coach is fired, or a player is traded,” she said, “boom, I’m looking on my Twitter feed.” According to X, sports fans comprise more than 42% of its audience.
A partnership between a sportsbook like BetMGM and a platform like X could give it access to millions more users than it presently reaches. The partnership announcement comes less than two weeks before the Super Bowl when football fans will throng to the platform to get in on the action.
Receiving betting statistics in the same place as news and updates may lead fans to treat betting as an inherent part of the sporting experience. This shift in thinking could greatly benefit BetMGM, especially when social media feeds are saturated with betting content. The sportsbook will be able to clearly distinguish itself from the noise on the platform by seamlessly integrating statistics into sports fans’ feeds.
However, the platform has recently faced outages, especially during high-traffic events. The partnership’s impact on X’s to handle the additional traffic remains to be determined. During the 2023 Super Bowl, Twitter suffered its second outage in the same week. During the halftime show, many users could not Tweet about the action. The issues prompted Musk to direct X staff to halt the development of new features to prioritize the platform’s stability.
Looking Ahead at the BetMGM-X Partnership
While the deal may seem beneficial for both parties, time will tell whether things go according to plan. Large corporations like Apple and Disney paused advertising on the platform over concerns of antisemitic content. With sports fans seeming to be the platform’s most loyal users, the deal with BetMGM may be well-received as something that caters exclusively to their interests.
A section of sports fans may oppose the introduction of native betting content on X, but this is unlikely to pose a significant problem in the United States as the wave of legalization continues to sweep across the country.
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