Sports Betting Service Introduced on X (former Twitter) through Partnership with BetMGM

X and MGM’s sports betting subsidiary BetMGM struck an exclusive partnership that allowed X to incorporate sports betting data onto the platform.

Sports gambling statistics will be available on social media thanks to a partnership between X, formerly Twitter, and MGM Resorts International’s online gambling business BetMGM. However, that doesn’t imply that you’ll be betting on the app.

X Will Show Betting Odds Plus Link to Place Wagers

With a portfolio of extraordinarily profitable hotels in Las Vegas, MGM, estimated to be worth $15 billion, announced in July 2018 that it has partnered with UK gaming company GVC Holdings to launch BetMGM, an attempt to take a share of the US sports betting and online gaming market.
The exact financial details of the partnership were unknown, but shortly X will have a feature that will show betting odds and give users a direct link to BetMGM so they can place bets.

This occurs at a crucial time for both businesses as NFL Super Bowl LVIII approaches. Where X excels is at live events. For example, the platform received a record-breaking 28.4 million tweets during the 2015 broadcast. But since Elon Musk, the owner of X, slashed most of the company’s employees, the platform has been beset with disruptions at major events like the Super Bowl—it even crashed during the halftime show the previous year. When there was another outage just before the big event in 2023, Musk sent an email to the crew telling them to halt working on new features “in favor of maximizing system stability and robustness, especially with the Super Bowl coming up“.

Partnership Comes at Time When Majority of Sports Media Platforms Are Saturated With Gambling Content

After the two top bookmakers DraftKings and FanDuel, BetMGM is the third most popular sports gambling app in the US. It already has significant relationships with Yahoo and the baseball YouTube show Foul Territory. This possible collaboration between X and MGM occurs at a moment when gambling content is abundant on almost all sports media platforms due to the industry’s growing legalization. Since users still utilize the app to discuss sports, it makes some sense that X would collaborate with a gambling website.

Nonetheless, it’s odd to see MGM align with X at a time when most companies are distancing themselves from Musk’s networking site as if it’s going out of style. Massive companies such as Disney and Apple have discarded X following the new owner’s dissemination of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Thus, one large brand may soon be much more prominent on the site, albeit we’re not entirely sure how it will appear or when it will happen.