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 International Gambling Studies

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Assessing the bets advertised on Twitter by

gambling operators and gambling affiliates – an
observational study incorporating simulation data
to measure bet success

Scott Peter Benjamin Houghton & Mark Moss

To cite this article: Scott Peter Benjamin Houghton & Mark Moss (2022): Assessing the bets
advertised on Twitter by gambling operators and gambling affiliates – an observational study
incorporating simulation data to measure bet success, International Gambling Studies, DOI:
10.1080/14459795.2022.2114527

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INTERNATIONAL GAMBLING STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/14459795.2022.2114527

Assessing the bets advertised on Twitter by gambling

operators and gambling affiliates – an observational study
incorporating simulation data to measure bet success
Scott Peter Benjamin Houghton and Mark Moss
Department of Psychology, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This study assessed bets advertised on Twitter by betting operators Received 12 May 2022
and affiliates, as well as their success. Bets advertised by 10 Twitter Accepted 12 August 2022
accounts were tracked over two weeks. Information recorded KEYWORDS
included: bet odds, bet type, number of times advertised, and bet Gambling; social media;
success. The success of bets was calculated based upon placing marketing; gambling
equal stakes on each bet and running four sets of 10,000 simula­ affiliates; advertising
tions, each of an increasing number of randomly chosen bets with
fixed bet stake per bet from those recorded. Both operators and
affiliates advertised around 140 bets per day at average decimal
odds of 6.0, however affiliates posted each bet three-times more
than operators. Only one-in-five bets advertised won. Affiliate bets
led to a 12% loss of original stakes, whilst operator bets led to a 20%
loss. Only 30% of 10,000 simulations of 14 randomly chosen bets
led to profit, decreasing to 19% when the number of bets included
in the simulation increased to 140. Findings raise concerns about
the volume of bets advertised on social media with large expected
losses. Simulation data demonstrates how the chance of making
a profit decreases the more advertised bets are bet upon. Future
research should explore bettors’ responses to such marketing.

Introduction
There is a growing consensus within academic literature of gambling being a public
health issue (Gambling Commission, 2018; Wardle et al., 2018), resulting in estimated
costs between £260 million and £1.16 billion per year in Great Britain ((2016)).
Gambling-related harms negatively impact upon gamblers across the spectrum of
disordered and at-risk gambling (Browne et al., 2017), as well as impacted others
such as family members of disordered gamblers (Goodwin et al., 2017). Harms arising
from gambling range across multiple dimensions, including; financial harms, relation­
ship issues, emotional distress, health problems, cultural harms, work issues and
criminal activity (Langham et al., 2016). Given the nature and scale of issues caused
by gambling, research has sought to investigate factors that may contribute toward
harm by encouraging riskier gambling behaviors. A recent meta-analysis highlighted
gambling marketing as one such factor (Killick & Griffiths, 2022), with advertising

CONTACT Scott Peter Benjamin Houghton [email protected] Northumbria University,

Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
2 S. P. B. HOUGHTON AND M. MOSS

exposure being related to more positive gambling attitudes, greater gambling intentions
and riskier gambling behavior. Consequently, it is important for research to explore the
types of marketing used by the gambling industry to identify elements that may
encourage riskier behaviors.
One type of marketing that has received increasing focus in recent times is social
media marketing, with a study employing big data analytics highlighting that the five
largest gambling operators in Great Britain sent over 19,000 tweets in 8 months to their
620,000 followers in the UK (Rossi et al., 2021). Given how prevalent gambling marketing
is on social media, a recent systematic review aimed to explore how social media has been
researched within academic literature (James & Bradley, 2021). It was highlighted that
existing literature covers three domains; social media used to advertise gambling, social
media used as a support mechanism for gambling and social media as a measure of public
opinion on sporting events which are available to bet upon. There is a growing evidence
base, both internationally (Gainsbury et al., 2016) and in the UK (Houghton et al., 2019;
Killick & Griffiths, 2019), of the types of content included within social media marketing
of gambling operators. Such studies highlight that operators post a large frequency of
sporting news, humor, and direct advertising. Researchers have also highlighted gam­
bling affiliation, a process whereby a company or individual is financially incentivized to
advertise on behalf of the gambling industry, as a potentially dangerous practice
(Houghton et al., 2019, 2020). Concerns around gambling affiliation are centered around
affiliates presenting themselves as gambling tipsters or betting communities, whilst not
making their relationship with the gambling industopery clear. Therefore, it may not be
clear to the consumer that affiliates actually receive a fee for getting them to sign up to
a gambling operator or get a percentage of their lifetime losses (Houghton et al., 2020).
There is also emerging evidence that bettors may place increased confidence in certain
types of bets advertised by affiliates (Houghton & Moss, 2020). However, whilst research
has explored the types of content posted by gambling operators on social media, there has
been limited research on the bets advertised on social media.
Whilst little is known in relation to the types of bets advertised on social media,
research has investigated the types of bets advertised on British television and in book­
maker shop windows. One study explored odds displayed on screen during advertise­
ments where individuals were placing bets, finding an average stake of £10 being placed
within the bets and median odds of 4.40 (Lopez-Gonzalez et al., 2017). Additionally,
Newall (2015) carried out an observational study of shop window and television adver­
tised bets during the 2014 football World Cup and found that the majority of advertised
bets focused upon complex gambles. Within the paper, the author explains how more
complex gambles lead to larger expected losses for bettors due a larger ‘overround’ within
the markets for complex bets. An overround within sports betting refers to the extent to
which the sum of bookmaker’s odds for mutually exclusive events exceeds 1. Whilst there
are only three possible outcomes when betting on the outcome of a football match, the
number of possible outcomes for a first goalscorer bet is far greater. As a result, the
increased number of potential outcomes tends to lead to an increased overround and
subsequently, larger expected losses. Additionally, it was argued that advertised bets take
advantage of the biases termed the representativeness heuristic whereby individuals make
overestimations on the probability of complex events due to them appearing more
 INTERNATIONAL GAMBLING STUDIES 3

representative. For example, bookmakers would often advertise the favorite team win­
ning by a large amount or a star player being the first goalscorer.
Further research exploring television advertising during the subsequent World Cup in
2018 found a similar pattern of adverts consisting of mostly complex bets (Newall et al.,
2019). In fact, complex bets were advertised more frequently during the 2018 World Cup
in comparison to the 2014 World Cup. Bets which required a combination of more than
one selection (for example, two different players to score) were featured in 34.8% of 2018
World Cup advertising compared to just 4% of advertising in 2014, with the frequency of
simple bets on teams to win dropping from 7% in 2014 to 0% in 2018. Additionally, it was
observed that around a quarter of advertised bets were shown to have increased odds and
40% of bets had the potential for the outcome of the bet to be decided before the end of
the match. This highlights both the use of incentives to increase perceived value of bets
and the use of bets with quicker outcomes to encourage a higher frequency of betting.
A further study exploring television advertising during English Premier League foot­
ball matches in January and February 2016 found that mean decimal odds of advertised
bets was just under 7.5 (Newall, 2017). Additionally, over 50% of advertised bets required
bettors to make a prediction on a specific goalscorer. Building upon this, the authors
conducted multiple experimental studies exploring bettors understanding of the implied
probability of different types of events within a football match. Whilst bettors had a good
understanding of implied probabilities of simplistic bets, they consistently over-
estimated the likelihood of more complex events. Since bettors have a poor under­
standing of the likelihood of complex events, this furthers the argument that advertising
complex bets may lead to larger and more consistent losses, as compared to more simple
bets.
The current study aims to develop an understanding of the frequency and types of bets
advertised by British gambling operators and gambling affiliates on social media. This
will build upon previous literature that has highlighted that British television advertising
focuses upon advertising complex bets which bettors struggle to accurately judge the
probability of and that lead to larger expected losses (Newall, 2015, 2017; Newall et al.,
2019). In addition, the study also aims to assess how successful these bets are and how
likely it is that a bettor would make a profit or loss based upon betting on advertised bets.

Method
Sampling procedure
In building upon the findings of a previous study that explored the types of content
posted on social media by British gambling operators (Houghton et al., 2019), the
decision was made to investigate bets advertised by the same 10 accounts that were
included within that study. This decision was taken as these accounts represented the five
operators (SkyBet, PaddyPower, Bet365, Coral, William Hill) and five affiliates
(FootyAccumulators, FootySuperTips, TheWinnersEnclosure, MyRacingTips and
LiveFootball) with the highest reach on Twitter. It was then confirmed that all accounts
were still active, which was determined by whether they had posted at least once within
the previous week. One of the affiliate accounts had been rebranded from LiveFootball to
FootballTips. The number of followers of the five operator accounts range from 219,800
4 S. P. B. HOUGHTON AND M. MOSS

(William Hill) to 650,600 (PaddyPower), whilst affiliate followers ranged from 201,300
(FootballTips) to 603,100 (FootyAccumulators).
For a two-week period between the 16th and 28th of September in 2019, the lead
researcher manually tracked each of the 10 Twitter accounts and made a record of
every bet that was advertised on these accounts. For each bet that was advertised,
the following information was recorded: what the advertised bet was, the date in
which the bet was first advertised, the type of bet which was advertised, the decimal
odds of the bet, how many times the bet was advertised, whether a betting induce­
ment accompanied the bet, whether the bet won and whether any comment was
made on the account about the success of the bet. Each account was checked four
times daily to make the observations, with the timestamps of the tweets used to
ensure that no post made was observed more than once. All bets which were
referenced within a tweet were included within the study, therefore an individual
tweet could have included multiple advertised bets. Advertised bets were either
included in the text of the tweet, within an accompanying image or on a webpage
accessed through a hyperlink in the tweet.

Analysis procedure
Observational data collected on the bets advertised was used to calculate a range of
descriptive statistics on each data category for each individual account and subse­
quently for the two account types (operator and affiliate). Descriptive statistics
calculated on advertised bets were: total number of bets advertised, the mean
number of bets advertised by days, the mean number of times each bet was
advertised, median odds of advertised bets, percentage of advertised bets which
were price boosted and the percentage of bets advertised by different bet types.
Median odds were presented to represent average odds due to the presence of
extreme outliers which greatly increased the mean odds of advertised bets. Success
of advertised bets was then measured by calculating the percentage of bets which
won and by calculating the percentage of original stakes lost if an individual were to
bet on each advertised bet with an equal stake. The median decimal odds of winning
and losing bets were then calculated. Percentages of winning and losing bets
commented upon by the accounts were also determined as a measure of how honest
the accounts were about the success of their advertised bets.
Mann-Whitney U tests were run to assess differences between account types on bets
advertised per day, how often bets are advertised and bet odds. A further Mann-Whitney
U test was run in order to assess whether there was a significant difference between odds
of winning and losing advertised bets. Chi-squared tests of independence were run to
assess whether there was a significant relationship between account type and the follow­
ing variables: percentage of advertised bets which were price boosted, type of bet,
percentage of bets won and percentage of original stakes lost. Inspections of standardized
residuals were then made to assess for differences on each of the variables between the
operator and affiliate accounts.
Finally, given that it is implausible any individual bettor would bet on every single
advertised bet over the two-week period, a serious of simulations were run through the
statistical programming software R (RStudio Team, 2020) to assess returns for randomly
 INTERNATIONAL GAMBLING STUDIES 5

chosen samples of advertised bets, based upon betting even stakes on each bet. Three sets
of 10,000 simulations of 14 randomly chosen bets were run initially – one for operator
advertised bets, one for affiliate advertised bets and one for a combination of both. Each
of the simulations were ran independently of one another. This process was then repeated
three times for 28, 70, and 140 randomly chosen bets. These numbers were chosen to
reflect an average of one, two, five, and ten bets per day. Information recorded on the
simulations included the percentage of the 10,000 simulations that made profit, the
median returns from the number of bets chosen within the simulation (e.g. for simula­
tions of 14 randomly selected bets, this would be the median returns from 14 units staked
evenly across bets) and the mean percentage losses across simulations.

Results
Bets advertised
As demonstrated in Table 1, both operators and affiliates advertised a large quantity of
bets throughout the two-week period in which the social media accounts were
observed. Whilst there was little difference between the number of unique bets adver­
tised each day by operators and affiliates, around 139 for each, affiliates (Mdn = 2) did
post their advertised bets more frequently than gambling operators (Mdn = 1),
U = 892,303.50, p < 0.01. There was no significant difference between the decimal
odds of advertised bets between operators (Mdn = 6) and affiliates (Mdn = 5.67),
U = 1,846,720.50, p = 0.182. However, examination of standardized residuals within
a significant Chi squared test of independence between account type and use of betting
incentives [χ2 (1) = 150.389, p < 0.001] highlighted that there was a significantly higher
frequency of bets being price boosted by operators (12.31%) compared to affili­
ates (1.42%).
The three main types of bets advertised by operators and affiliates were single
bets, multiple bets where 2 or more selections are combined across multiple events
and single game multibets where 2 or more selections are combined within a single
event. The frequency of each type of bet is shown in Table 2. A Chi squared test of
independence demonstrated a significant association between account type and types

Table 1. Advertised bet frequency, median odds of advertised bets and percentage of advertised bets
which are price boosted for each operator and affiliate account.
Bets Percentage of
Total Bets Advertised Mean Number of Times Median Odds of Advertised Bets Price
Account Advertised per Day Each Bet is Advertised Advertised Bets Boosted
SkyBet 72 5.14 1.10 11.00 26.39
PaddyPower 1076 76.86 1.40 6.00 8.94
Bet365 315 22.50 1.02 6.00 0
Coral 392 28.00 1.26 4.33 21.94
WilliamHill 95 6.79 1.01 11.00 38.95
Operator 1950 139.29 1.28 6.00 12.31
FootyAccumulators 99 7.07 3.10 8.00 30.30
FootySuperTips 690 49.29 2.31 4.84 0
TheWinnersEnclosure 361 25.79 6.73 5.00 2.22
MyRacingTips 679 48.50 2.10 6.00 0
FootballTips 126 9.00 3.22 6.05 3.17
Affiliates 1955 139.64 3.15 5.70 1.42
6 S. P. B. HOUGHTON AND M. MOSS

Table 2. Percentage of single, multiple, and single game multibets advertised

per operator and affiliate account.
Account Single Multiple Single Game Multibet
SkyBet 51.39 36.11 12.50
PaddyPower 86.06 5.39 8.55
Bet365 84.44 0.32 15.24
Coral 92.86 0.26 6.89
WilliamHill 62.11 3.16 34.74
Operator 84.72 4.56 10.72
FootyAccumulators 5.05 58.59 36.36
FootySuperTips 76.74 19.91 3.34
TheWinnersEnclosure 86.98 10.80 2.22
MyRacingTips 81.54 16.86 1.62
FootballTips 33.33 53.97 12.70
Affiliates 73.90 21.30 4.79

of bets advertised, χ2 (2) = 276.925, p < 0.001. Single bets were the most advertised
bet type for both operators and affiliates, however inspection of standardized
residuals showed that operators posted a higher frequency of single bets and single
game multibets whereas affiliates posted a higher frequency of multiple bets.

Bet success
The success of advertised bets was observed for 2 weeks after data collection had been
completed and is shown in Table 3. Bets which had a winning or losing outcome were
noted as such, whereas bets which did not yet have an outcome were not included in the
calculations for bet success. A Chi squared test of independence revealed no association
between account type and bet success χ2 (1) = 0.489, p = 0.484, with just under one in five
resulted bets being winners regardless of account types. However, it was calculated that
operator advertised bets would lead to a larger percentage loss of original stakes (20.46%)
based upon betting the same amount on each advertised bet than affiliate advertised bets
(12.52%). It was also found that, as expected, winning advertised bets across both account
types had significantly lower odds (Mdn = 2.63) on average than advertised bets which

Table 3. Information on success of advertised bets and the frequency of commenting upon bet
success after the bet had been advertised for each gambling operator and gambling affiliate Twitter
account.
Percentage of Median Median Percentage of Percentage of
Advertised Percentage Odds of Odds of Winning Bets where Losing Bets where
Bets which of Original Winning Losing Outcome was Outcome was
Account Won Stake Lost Bets Bets Discussed Discussed
SkyBet 11.72 55.88 3.75 11.13 100 0
PaddyPower 20.16 16.77 2.50 7.00 0 0
Bet365 21.09 11.69 3.55 7.50 0 0
Coral 23.20 16.77 3.10 4.90 1.35 0
WilliamHill 2.47 90.31 3.92 11.00 0 0
Operator 19.85 20.46 2.63 7.00 1.58 0
FootyAccumulators 10.31 44.10 3.60 10.00 40.00 0
FootySuperTips 22.59 22.86 2.00 7.50 12.50 0.19
TheWinnersEnclosure 23.32 7.24 2.75 6.00 61.25 3.42
MyRacingTips 17.58 13.64 3.00 7.00 42.61 3.15
FootballTips 23.20 −59.05 3.75 7.25 41.38 0
Affiliates 20.40 12.52 2.63 7.00 21.76 1.79
 INTERNATIONAL GAMBLING STUDIES 7

Table 4. Percentage of simulations resulting in profit, median returns from a one-unit stake and mean
percentage losses within 10,000 simulations of 14, 28, 70, and 140 randomly selected bets from
operator, affiliate, and both account types.
Operators Affiliates Overall
10,000 simulations of 14 randomly selected bets
% of simulations which made profit 25.17 32.89 29.51
Median returns from a 1 unit stake on each selected bet (14 units staked total) 8.49 10.02 9.20
Mean Percentage Losses 23.57 12.58 18.04
10,000 simulations of 28 randomly selected bets
% of simulations which made profit 23.64 31.25 28.41
Median returns from a 1 unit stake on each selected bet (28 units staked total) 18.73 21.56 20.30
Mean Percentage Losses 23.29 14.39 17.82
10,000 simulations of 70 randomly selected bets
% of simulations which made profit 19.44 28.75 23.88
Median returns from a 1 unit stake on each selected bet (70 units staked total) 50.76 57.53 54.58
Mean Percentage Losses 22.73 13.69 17.92
10,000 simulations of 140 randomly selected bets
% of simulations which made profit 13.88 24.62 18.82
Median returns from a 1 unit stake on each selected bet (140 units staked total) 104.41 118.40 111.54
Mean Percentage Losses 22.85 13.48 17.96

lost (Mdn = 7.00), U = 472,805.50, p < 0.01. Affiliate accounts posted updates on the
success of their bets at a rate of just over one in five winning bets and just under two in
every hundred losing bets. Operators rarely commented upon the success of the bets that
they advertised, updating their followers on the success of under two in one hundred
winning bets and none of their losing bets.

Simulation
As seen in Table 4, findings revealed that both types of accounts showed a low
chance of making profit from advertised bets when choosing bets at random.
A higher percentage of simulations upon affiliate advertised bets resulted in profit
compared to operator advertised bets, regardless of bet frequency. However, it was
observed that as the number of bets included within the simulations increased, the
percentage of simulations which resulted in profit decreased, highlighting the fact
that it appears harder to make profit from betting on advertised bets the more
frequently you bet upon them. An important point of consideration here is that the
number of simulations that result in profit would continue to fall as the number of
bets chosen within the simulations increased, and at the point every chosen bet was
included within the simulation, none of the simulations would result in a profit.
This is due to the previously discussed fact that both operator and affiliate adver­
tised bets led to an overall loss of between 12% and 20% of original stakes.
However, if the simulations only included 1 chosen bet, around 20% of the simula­
tions would result in a profit as this was the number of bets that won. Average
percentage losses of original stakes remained relatively consistent as the number of
bets within the simulations increased, however this would still lead to a larger
financial loss due to the higher total stakes involved as bet frequency increases.
8 S. P. B. HOUGHTON AND M. MOSS

Discussion
Summary of findings
The current study aimed to investigate the frequency and types of bets advertised by
British sports betting operators and affiliates on social media. It was found that betting
operators and affiliates advertised a large volume of bets each day, with no difference
between the number of bets advertised between the two types of accounts. However,
affiliates did post their advertised bets more frequently than operators. Observed odds
were similar across both accounts and price boosts were the most used incentive.
Operators posted a higher frequency of single bets and single game multi-bets, whereas
affiliates posted a higher frequency of multiple bets.
The current study also aimed to assess how successful these bets were and how likely it
is that a bettor would make a profit or loss based upon betting on advertised bets.
Findings highlight a low frequency of winning bets across both types of accounts, with
affiliate advertised bets only slightly outperforming operator advertised bets. The simula­
tion data then further supported these findings, with both account types leading to
consistent losses. Operator advertised bets led to larger losses than affiliate advertised
bets and the likelihood of making a profit within the simulations decreased as the number
of bets within the simulation increased, highlighting the increased difficulty of making
a profit from betting on advertised bets as the frequency of bets made increases.

Contribution to literature and policy implications

The large frequency of bets advertised by both operators and affiliates fits in line with the
large number of posts made for direct advertising purposes within previous research
(Houghton et al., 2019). However, the current study expands on this by highlighting that
the reason for a higher frequency of posts for the purpose of direct advertising by affiliates
within the previous study is due to affiliates advertising each suggested bet more
commonly, as opposed to advertising a larger quantity of bets. Given the lack of clarity
discussed previously over the affiliates’ financial relationship with the betting industry,
this large volume of advertised bets may promote impulsive betting due to the presenta­
tion of affiliate accounts as betting experts. This may specifically be problematic for
individuals within at-risk populations, given that research has highlighted such popula­
tions report higher levels of impulsiveness (Russell et al., 2018). This is particularly
concerning given research suggesting bettors may place increased confidence in certain
types of bets advertised by gambling affiliates (Houghton & Moss, 2020). It also presents
a further risk for those under the legal age to gamble as the previous study showed there
were no age barriers on affiliate accounts, therefore allowing children to be exposed to
such advertising on social media. Given the evidence that exposure to gambling market­
ing normalizes gambling amongst underage populations (Nyemcsok et al., 2018; Pitt
et al., 2017), this suggests a need for a review around the regulations of affiliate marketing
on social media to protect at-risk populations.
The average decimal odds of advertised bets on social media was slightly lower at 6.0
compared to the average odds of television adverts at around 7.5 identified in previous
research (Newall, 2017; Newall et al., 2019). One potential explanation for this is the fact
that the larger quantity of advertised bets on social media allows a wider variety of bets to
 INTERNATIONAL GAMBLING STUDIES 9

be advertised compared to television adverts. Alternatively, it may be the case that the
higher Regardless, the average odds of bets on social media are still high at 6.0. Bets with
odds of 6.0 give an implied probability of winning of just 16.66%, assuming no operator
profit margin. As such, betting on advertised bets is likely to require bettors to bet
a higher amount of money on average before seeing any returns. Such an increased
volatility also places more gamblers into a losing position, with fewer gamblers profiting
from betting (Rockloff et al., 2019). This further portrays social media marketing as a risk
factor within gambling due to the advertising of a high quantity of bets which could
therefore result in more bettors losing money over time.
The finding that price boosted bets were the most common inducement included
within bets advertised on social media aligns with research on television advertising
during the 2018 World Cup (Newall et al., 2019). Whilst the rate of price boosted bets in
the current study for operators was lower at around one in ten bets compared to one in
four bets in television adverts, this again is likely due to the increased frequency of social
media advertising. This allows operators to advertise a larger variety of bets whilst
television adverts are more likely to focus on advertising special offers. However, given
the frequency of posting by operators there was still an average of around 14 price
boosted bets per day across the 5 operators within the study. This is concerning given that
experimental research has highlighted that increased odds was the most popular induce­
ment within a sample of sports bettors (Rockloff et al., 2019). Additionally, the study
highlighted that the inclusion of an inducement encouraged bettors to choose riskier bets
and that results were consistent regardless of the risk level of an individual’s betting
behavior. The minimal advertising of incentivized bets by gambling affiliates can be
explained by the fact affiliates tended to post highly attractive sign-up offers but these
were mostly advertised separately from specific bets and therefore were not tracked
within the study. Affiliates also are not able to boost their own suggested bets, given
that they are only advertising on behalf of the operators. This difference in strategy in use
of incentives suggests incentives are mainly used by affiliates to attempt to get individuals
to sign-up to betting companies whereas operators use incentives to present their bets as
being of increased value to existing customers.
The study found that single bets were the most advertised bets for both operators and
affiliates. This can largely be explained by the vast number of different types of single bets
advertised across the two weeks. For example, single bets identified within the current
study ranged from relatively simple events with as few as two possible outcomes to more
complex predictions such as predicting a first goalscorer within a football match, the
winner of a horse race or the winner of a tournament. As such, the large variety in bets
within the ‘single’ category makes it difficult to draw solid conclusions around the
complexity of bets within the category. However, it was observed within the study that
affiliates posted a higher frequency of multiple bets than operators and operators posted
a higher frequency of single-game multi-bets. Both of these types of bets are more
complex than single bets and therefore are likely to lead to more individuals making
a loss within a population of bettors due to higher market over-rounds and poor under­
standing of probabilities with higher bet complexity (Newall, 2015, 2017).
One novel aspect of the current study was that it investigated the success of bets which
were advertised. Findings highlighted that around one in five advertised bets were winners,
regardless of the type of account they were advertised on. Both affiliate advertised bets and
10 S. P. B. HOUGHTON AND M. MOSS

operator advertised bets made a loss based upon betting on each bet with even stakes, albeit
affiliate bets led to a smaller loss. Whilst this may show that affiliates bets slightly out­
performed operator ones, it still highlights that their bets lose at a rate of four times those
which win and that on average their advertised bets lead to losses. These findings were
replicated within the simulation data of samples of randomly chosen bets, with affiliate bets
again outperforming those of operators yet more simulations leading to a loss than a profit.
Further to this, the simulation data suggests that there is less chance of making profit as the
number of bets increased within the simulation. Affiliates also posted updates on one in five
winning bets but less than two in one hundred losing bets, creating a false image of how
successful their bets are. Taken together, these findings raise further questions as to the
transparency of affiliate accounts on social media and their potential to be harmful to bettors.
As affiliate accounts are largely presented as betting communities or ‘tipping’ accounts, they
should be required to track the success of their suggested bets and report this back to their
followers. This would help their followers make informed decisions on whether they want to
bet on suggested bets.

Evaluation of study and future research

By providing an initial evaluation of the types of bets that are advertised on social media
and their success, the study provides a crucial insight into one of the main betting
marketing strategies employed within Great Britain. Given that spend on social media
marketing is increasing (GambleAware, 2018) and gambling companies agreed to reduce
their television advertising from August 2019, it is likely that increasing focus will be
placed on social media marketing going forward. This highlights the importance of
understanding how operators engage with such marketing. The current study was also
the first study to the author’s knowledge to investigate the bets advertised by gambling
affiliates on social media. This is important as little has currently been researched on
affiliate marketing for sports betting and concerns have been raised as to how such
marketing may be interpreted by bettors (Houghton et al., 2020). Another strength of the
current study was the novel use of simulation data to highlight the likelihood of making
a profit or loss based upon betting on a random selection of advertised bets. This
demonstrated that bettors are unlikely to make a profit betting on ‘tipped’ bets by
affiliates and that bettors’ chances of making a profit decrease the more they bet on
advertised bets. As such, it is suggested that future research could build upon the use of
such a strategy and advance on it to consider different staking plans used by bettors.
One limitation of such an approach is that it can be criticized for lacking applicability
to real world betting choices. Many bettors would argue that their betting choices are not
made at random and that they rely on their own skill to choose bets. Additionally, there
was no data to assess how frequently any individual advertised bet was taken up by
customers and therefore the simulations may not be representative of actual betting
behavior. However, research has demonstrated that bettors tend to overestimate their
own ability to predict outcomes within sporting events and make poor probability
judgments of complex events (Cantinotti et al., 2004; Khazaal et al., 2012; Newall,
2017). Therefore, there is little evidence to suggest that, on average, bettors would be
more successful choosing their own bets rather than betting on a random selection of
bets. This is something which could be empirically assessed within future research.
 INTERNATIONAL GAMBLING STUDIES 11

However, the fact that around four in every five bets advertised lost and the average odds
of winning bets was just 2.63 suggests that it would be difficult for bettors to profit from
advertised bets. A further limitation of the study is that when assessing whether the
success of bets, the authors only considered when whether the success of bets had been
directly commented upon. However, given the large of posts made on social media
relating to sports content (Houghton et al., 2019), the extent to which success of bets
was indirectly commented upon was not assessed.

Conclusion
The current study aimed to provide an understanding of the bets advertised on social media
and their success. It was found that there is a large number of bets advertised per day across
the most followed operator and affiliate accounts and that those bets tended to give odds
with low expected probability of winning. This was supported by the data looking at how
successful bets were which found that just one in five bets on average were winners and that
both operator and affiliate advertised bets would lead to losses if they were bet on with even
stakes. This was further compounded by the simulation data which showed that betting on
a random selection of advertised bets more commonly led to a loss than a profit and that
chances of making a profit decreased with the number of bets included within the
simulation. Such findings highlight the potential dangers for bettors engaging with social
media marketing on social media, whereby the frequency and types of bets advertised will
likely result in more overall losing bettors within the population of bettors.
Concerns were also highlighted over affiliate marketing, with affiliate advertised bets
being framed as betting tips yet still leading to regular losses within the data. Affiliates
also misrepresented the success of their bets by posting more frequent updates of
winning bets than losing bets, creating an image of their advertised bets being more
successful than they are. This is something which may create a false sense of confidence
within affiliate advertised bets. It is suggested that for affiliate marketing to be done in
a manner which fits within the safer gambling framework, affiliates should be more
transparent about the success of their advertised bets to help bettors make informed
decisions regarding their advertising.

Disclosure statement
This study was carried out as a part of the lead authors’ PhD studies. The PhD was funded by
GambleAware. Author 2 declares that he has no conflict of interest. GambleAware approved the
overall focus of the PhD, however had no involvement in the research design, methodology,
conduct, analysis or write-up. Author D declares that he has no conflict of interest. Author was the
lead supervisor on the main author’s PhD program. In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy
and my ethical obligation as a researcher, I am reporting that I receive funding from GambleAware
to carry out my PhD studies, a company that may be affected by the research reported in the
enclosed paper. I have disclosed those interests fully to Taylor & Francis, and I have in place an
approved plan for managing any potential conflicts arising from that involvement.
12 S. P. B. HOUGHTON AND M. MOSS

Ethical approval
The study has received ethical approval from the ethics committee at Northumbria University. This
article does not contain any studies with human or animal participants performed by any of the
authors.

Preregistration statement
The authors declare that there is no pre-registration in relation to this study.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Mendeley Data at http://dx.
doi.org/10.17632/jwwkwj9wpc.1.

ORCID
Scott Peter Benjamin Houghton http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0165-122X
Mark Moss http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5994-2540

Notes on contributors
Scott Peter Benjamin Houghton is a postgraduate researcher at Northumbria University. His PhD
studies are focussed upon the relationship between social media and gambling. More specifically,
he is interested in furthering understanding on how social media is used in relation to gambling,
the impact this has upon gambling attitudes and behaviors and whether social media can be used
to effectively promote safer gambling.
Mark Moss is head of the Department of Psychology at Northumbria University. He is responsible
for the strategic direction of the Division and oversees staffing and budgeting for all programmes
of study. Mark was a founding member of the Human Cognitive Neuroscience Unit (now the
Brain Performance and Nutrition Research Centre) at Northumbria University. His main research
interests relate to the modulation of cognitive function and mood through natural interventions,
with a current focus on phyto-aromatics.

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