The rise of Gambling Twitter

The passionate online community known as Gambling Twitter has long been an intense battleground, full of bettors, bookmakers, con artists and trolls.

For years, bettors and bookmakers have relentlessly lobbed pot shots at each other, while anxiously awaiting the next tweet from a small-college beat writer or for a WNBA player to post a telling emoji. Meanwhile, con artists, promising inside information and guaranteed locks, lurk behind random anonymous accounts, ready to take advantage of the gullible, and trolls stand poised to attack anyone who doesn’t meet their standards.

People absolutely love it. And, now, with widespread legal betting spreading rapidly, Gambling Twitter is on the rise.

In February, according to Twitter, the top hashtag included in sports betting tweets about the Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals wasn’t #ramsnation or #whodey — it was #GamblingTwitter.

“Hashtag Gambling Twitter is a thing,” Mike Dupree, director of media and entertainment for Twitter, told ESPN. “I don’t think we can trademark it, but it is certainly something that has its own identity and community, which has been awesome to see.”

Twitter, for the first time, is releasing internal data and commenting on the prevalence of sports betting content on the social media platform. The data was gathered by Twitter Insiders Studies and comes from a sampling of individuals 18 or older who have bet on sports in the past 12 months, live in a state where sports betting is legal and use at least one social media platform.

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 frequently and place larger wagers. Additionally, according to the data provided to ESPN by Twitter:

• 62% of bettors on Twitter place wagers weekly and spend 15% more on bets annually compared to bettors on other social media platforms.

• 72% of bettors check Twitter to follow the status of their…