Sports bettingnot only requires an investment of the body. It also requires an investment of money. Social media are shaping trends in sports betting and betting behaviour.
Secondly, social media not only provides bettors with real-time data and expert analysis, but also affords them a platform to go beyond the veil of isolation by interacting with fellow bettors online, sharing tips, insights and strategies.
Influencers
Social media has improved how sports bettors compile information and make wagers, but comes with new threats and shortcomings, meaning that bettors need at all times to question the provenance of their data, as well as their access to it.
Sports betting influencers with large Twitter and Instagram fanbases who provide analysis on upcoming matches are invaluable to punters – they might be the insider knowledge required to net a jackpot.
Influencers offer expertise but also create intimate channels with their followers, making them a great way to reach small target markets for products and services. Micro-influencers have smaller followings but higher engagement rates than celebrity influencers, and are trusted more by followers. Micro-influencers might be good partners for brands looking to market sports betting.
Technological advancements
Not all of these opportunities and challenges of technological progress in betting – from the blockchain, to artificial intelligence, virtual reality platforms or mobile betting apps – are made equally and universally available for all markets and bettors. Similarly, not all aspects of technological progress occurring in sports themselves, or with the audiences and the ways they bet, will be addressed by these new platforms and innovations.
Nowadays social media is a great online room to get small advice and to share personal results between sports bettors. Moreover, social media platforms provide quick updates of game performance and news about events taking place that might affect the odds and lead to spread a putting in on.
However all that information published through social media platform is not reliable, such as believing and following in the public opinion without further examination and study.
Physical gamification (already integrated into virtual reality and augmented reality technologies) is yet a further level of realism, offering online betting participants an immersive virtual ‘stadium’ to place their bets and follow the action; a virtual world that shows the spread of gamblers’ bets in real time; a virtual reality that promotes one-to-one communication between counters and customers, a truly customisable experience in which the user is curated and shown the bets that will sell to them, emphasising the importance of the user and the interactions between brands and everyday life.
Legality
Due to the advent of social media, betting would never be the same. Newer bettors can immediately access a pool of information that could shape their bets. Social media has its own set of opportunities, newly developed risks and challenges bettors should consider if they want to use it as an additional resource for their betting strategy.
Social networks, therefore, have become an integral part of the culture of sports betting. Real-time information on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram helps players to follow their favourite analysts, but also, more importantly, to access instant game stats and odds, giving them a fair chance at informed betting – a luxury that used to be available only to professionals collecting inside information.
Such networks consist of message boards and by review board networks (for example, YouTube and TikTok), community-based networks and transmission media (YouTube and Instagram). However, while such networks open the possibility of open debate, they also create new sets of problems such as mental health problems, polarisation; on the other hand, offensive posts being hard to censor or filter.
Regulation
By pushing sports betting into a fast-paced digital space, social media is rapidly changing the betting culture of sports fanatics. Not only do fans have round-the-clock access to real-time stats and predictions, they are now able to follow social media influencers that dial into Instagram and TikTok to reveal their bets, both pre-game and live. Parlays are highlighted and money-line bets are publicised. Meanwhile, players quickly change their wagers based on odds-shifts.
But this speed can also lead to an overload of misinformation, and herding, where bettors who haven’t formed their own opinion place the same bet because that’s what others are doing, and don’t think for themselves and blatantly follow what others suggest, or bet what others bet, without making up their own mind. Some of those idea endings might be quite costly for you; therefore it is crucial that you stick to credible sources and keep an eye open for mines
Humour, celebrities, offers and promotions have been employed to market sports betting on social media. And they work. Such strategies can easily lead to increased players’ acceptance of sports betting, thus portraying this form of gambling as fun or exciting, however social media does not replace regulation obligations.
