A rumored partnership between X and BetMGM was made official Friday: BetMGM, which is a joint venture of MGM Resorts International MGM and Entain, is set to become the official live odds sports betting partner of X.
Billionaire Elon Musk acquired social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022.
What Happened: The deal is a "first-of-a-kind partnership" between a sports betting company and social media brand, according to the companies.
X will weave sports betting odds from BetMGM and provide links to the company's website and app on the platform.
"X is the center of the sports world's conversation 24 hours a day, seven days a week," BetMGM CEO Adam Greenblatt said. "Being directly accessible within that forum is an unprecedented opportunity to expand our reach to a passionate and engaged audience."
The partnership kicks off with odds for professional football contests, which comes ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl LVIII. Future odds for college sports and other professional sports will be added in the coming weeks, according to the companies.
"Sports never sleep on X and now with our strategic partnership with BetMGM, fans are practically in the front row. We're bringing sports fans on X even closer to the action so they can cheer, and now bet, on their favorite teams," X CEO Linda Yaccarino said.
Why It's Important: The partnership could provide a key to gaining new customer sign-ups for BetMGM. The sports betting brand frequently ranks third or fourth in online sports betting market share, trailing behind industry frontrunners DraftKings Inc DKNG and Flutter Entertainment FLUT subsidiary FanDuel.
BetMGM also is seeing increased competition as Fanatics expands its sports betting ambitions and Penn Entertainment PENN rebrands its sports betting platform as ESPN Bet.
NFL content remains popular on Twitter, according to statistics shared by the company's data account.
"Over a million people sent a total of 5.2 million posts about the NFL Divisional Round last weekend, up 18% compared to last year," the Twitter data account previously shared.
Last year's Super Bowl (Super Bowl LVII) coincided with an outage on Twitter during the halftime performance by Rihanna, with heavy engagement and interactions among fans discussing the game and musical performance.
The partnership could be a potential win-win, increasing engagement among sports fans on Twitter and helping to increase sign-ups for BetMGM in the highly competitive sports betting sector.
MGM Price Action: MGM shares are up 0.4% to $46.60 on Friday versus a 52-week trading range of $34.12 to $51.35.
Photo via Shutterstock.
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