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Taylor Swift Triggered a Tsunami of Sports Bets. Then She Stopped Turning Up
The singer generated millions in prop bets for the Kansas City Chiefs just by showing up to watch her boyfriend play. Now that she’s busy, gamblers are losing interest.
It’s hard to quantify the Swiftie demographic’s impact on these bets, but preseason, WIRED reached out to several sportsbooks including BetRivers, DraftKings, FanDuel and Rivalry, which said the Taylor Swift effect was real, and expected it would continue to affect their industry this season. Michael Naraine, an associate professor of sport management at Brock University in Canada, attributes this to the US election dominating news and prop betting cycles, along with less attention-grabbing headlines in the couple’s relationship as they settled into their partnership. A study from the University of Queensland in Australia published in December found nearly 90 percent of the country’s regular sports bettors are male, and suggested that this was due, at least partially, to physical betting spaces being “male-dominated” over history, though smartphones make gambling more accessible to female audiences.
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