Social media are now part of our everyday lives and there is nearly no activity that can’t be now incorporated or integrated to the virtual world of social networking platforms. Betting is no exception to that. We increasingly watch social media being stormed by Allbets bookmakers, tipsters and betting influencers and of course by punters.
In fact, sports betting becomes bigger and bigger on social media. In Twitter alone, the last few years, sports betting hashtags have increased by nearly 300% demonstrating not only how it is becoming a top theme of discussion among users, but also how much interest it concentrates, especially when these hashtags are often amongst the top trending ones.
Although it’s not only Twitter – other social media like Facebook or TikTok are also on the top of the list with the most sports betting popularity – it is the tweets, comments, posts and shares in this particular platform that appear to have the strongest impact on sports betting. According to recent stats, more than 60% of regular bettors use Twitter for betting related purposes.
How does Twitter and the likes increase betting?
To answer this, we first need to see how bettors get motivated to wager.
First, they get motivated to wager on an event when they see everybody talking about it on social media. If there is a growing discussion about a certain event -let’s say a specific football match or a particular UFC fight – then social media users tend to develop greater interest over this event and they are more likely to place a bet.
Motivation here occurs because being exposed to loads of information due to the increased discussion (comments, posts, shares etc), enhances the perceived knowledge and confidence in the predictive ability of the punters over the event in account. If there is much talk about the EPL final, it is very likely that the punter will place an outright bet, after absorbing and analyzing the loads of information exchanged.
If someone watches a match’s hashtag increase sharply, he will most likely get to see what this is about and why it gathers so much interest from other users. And if he finds information to be appealing, then he has more chances to bet on this event. Be it to get aligned with the trending ‘thing’ in betting or to leverage the accumulated knowledge coming from information communicated, punters are certainly more likely to bet on that particular game.
Second, they get motivated to wager on events that ‘influencers’ talk about, especially if these influencers have won big in sports betting. Boasting profits, talking about winning bets and giving out cues for particular events can make sports betting “influencers” turn into tipsters. Punters that see other users making bets that win and sharing their predictions and top picks, will most certainly be more willing to utilize these picks in their own betting.
In social media everything can potentially become viral, due to the communication’s ‘many to many’ context. Every time a betting influencer shares some kind of information, some kind of prediction or analysis about a certain game, this eventually reaches out to the masses and it creates an entire inflow of bets to the sportsbooks.
But it’s not only these betting influencers that increase betting. Well, the thing with social media is that it creates an intimacy between users, which works very much like the intimacy that exists in physical, face-to-face interaction.
Bettors develop strong ties to other bettors and gradually they build trusting relationships. When these trusting relationships involve others who are considered to be Pros in betting or who have an edge in some game, then they end up functioning like motivating factors for wagering.
And then we should not forget how bookmakers themselves fuel more betting growth through social media. Sportsbooks are not passive receivers of wagers. When it comes to social media, they have their own role to play whether this role is to promote certain offers and betting markets so as to attract more wagers from social media users or to spike bets but letting information slip regarding a specific game. And there are also many more ways which make social media valuable to bookies and which eventually end up driving growth in sports betting.