Using Twitter to make money, attempt 1

Betting on football transfers

In the beginning I noticed that social media was the first place for football transfer news to break. For example, let’s say Messi moved from Barcelona to Manchester City; this type of news would almost certainly be leaked on Twitter before the official announcement.

There are a few reasons for this:

(Ex)-Football agents are on social media and often leak reliable information

Club staff occasionally leak sensitive information (and sometimes get sacked for it)

Members of the public often spot a footballer in an usual location (e.g. the car park of another club on deadline day 🤔) or meeting other managers in public places

Sometimes the players themselves, or members of the management board, even post sensitive information.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic famously announced his arrival at Man United before they did.

Football player transfers are broken first on social media… so what? Well, unless you are a compulsive gambler, you may not know that you can actually bet on a player joining a club (or staying at their current club).

On one occasion the Leicester City chairman posted a photo, to his personal (!) Instagram account, of him signing a new contract with a key player (Riyad Mahrez). When I seen this photo a few minutes after it was uploaded, it struck me as very strange. Riyad Mahrez had been rumoured to join Arsenal for many months so when I saw this photo, I quickly checked to see if you could bet on “Riyad Mahrez to stay at Leicester” — which you could. During the frantic 5 minutes which followed, I bet as much money as my bookmaker would allow me.

Unfortunately he deleted the instagram photo I am talking about, however, he has posted many other photos which could be deemed “market moving information”.

I was able to use this strategy numerous times:

Wait for our algorithm to identify a breaking football transfer from Twitter Quickly search to see if I could bet on this transfer Bet on the transfer before the markets closed

This was really fun time. I had found a way to actually beat the market, something I’ve tried to do for a very long time. In the past I’d built (losing) poker bots, sports betting bots and football fantasy bots — but this system actually worked, and it felt far too easy…

Unfortunately the feeling of “free money” didn’t last long. On a Tuesday morning in February 2017 I received the following email from the bookmaker I had been using: