Just days before the kickoff of this year’s Super Bowl, X, the social-media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk previously called Twitter, launched a new partnership to display betting odds to users in the U.S.
BetMGM on Friday announced an agreement with X to become the platform’s exclusive live-odds sports betting partner. Under the deal, X will integrate BetMGM’s odds info and branding, with each game linking to BetMGM’s website and app to allow users to place wagers (where legally permissible).
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X users in the U.S. will be able to see BetMGM’s latest betting odds on pro football, with major professional and college sports expected to follow “in the coming weeks.” According to BetMGM, “The odds interface provides an easy clickthrough for each game to BetMGM’s app or website, creating a seamless user experience.”
“X is the center of the sports world’s conversation 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Being directly accessible within that forum is an unprecedented opportunity to expand our reach to a passionate and engaged audience,” BetMGM CEO Adam Greenblatt said in a statement.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino commented: “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.”
BetMGM is a partnership between MGM Resorts International and Entain that has exclusive access to all of MGM’s U.S. land-based and online sports betting, major tournament poker and online gaming businesses.
Musk, the world’s richest person, says he overpaid in swinging the $44 billion deal for Twitter last year — which he rechristened X and has refashioned into his vision of what a “free speech” platform should be.
In late October, just over a year after Musk closed the Twitter deal, X notified employees eligible for stock grants that they would receive shares at a valuation of $19 billion, down more than 50% from the transaction’s original value. Advertising revenue has plunged as much as 60% (according to Musk himself), amid ongoing concerns about hate speech and misinformation — which the aforementioned controversy over Musk’s thumbs-up of an antisemitic post on X has not helped to reverse. At this point, banks that extended roughly $13 billion in loans to Musk for the Twitter takeover (including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays) are facing significant losses on the debt if or when they try to sell it, after Musk made guarantees they wouldn’t lose money, per the Financial Times.
Last September, Musk said X/Twitter is “moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” which he claimed is necessary to thwart bots flooding the platform. In October, the company launched a test to charge users $1 per year to post to the platform. Going forward, Musk explained, X will be free to read “but $1/year to write.”
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