“Paddy Power Offers,” is an official verified Twitter account owned by the gambling site, Paddy Power. Their Twitter bio reads, “@paddypower’s sensible younger brother! Follow for daily Money Back Specials, Enhancements, Exclusive Bets & general sport chat! Followers must be aged 18+.” Trust me, there’s nothing sensible about what they sent earlier today.
Newcastle have suffered more Kop beatings over the last 20 years than an unarmed African-American male. The stats: http://t.co/GOOdyAszNo
— Paddy Power Offers (@PPOffers) April 13, 2015
Who in their right mind at Paddy Power thought THIS was a good idea? It is certainly grabbing attention because as of two and a half hours since this was tweeted, it has a total of 1,405 retweets and 367 favorites. The average tweet from @PPOffers is between 0 and 20. Also as of two and a half hours since this was tweeted, the tweet in question hasn’t been deleted.
The article itself previews today’s Liverpool vs. Newcastle game and talks about Liverpool’s domination against Newcastle at Anfield that goes back to the mid 90’s. When they had a run of thrilling offensive minded games against each other and was when both teams were fighting for first place supremacy. There is nothing in the article about cops beating unarmed African Americans. It’s just an informational article about the game and selected odds having to do with today’s game.
It is unknown if the writer of the article, Rob Dore, also sent the tweet. Since Paddy Power seems like a very big company, it’s likely Dore didn’t post the tweet and it was actually left to someone in the marketing or social media department. If that’s the case, I would be pretty upset if I was Dore since many will connect the article with the tweet and then the entire meaning of the article is lost. That, and I would be upset for being labeled as insensitive to an important social and racial issue as a result to the tweet and may have had nothing to do with sending that tweet.
When posting something online, you want to grab someone’s attention with a title or statement that will raise interest to go to your article and read what you have to say. This definitely got attention but not in any good way. It is unknown who’s at fault but this shouldn’t have even entered someone’s mind that this was remotely an appropriate thing to post, much less actually posting it and on top, not even deleting that. Way to double down on your work, person who runs @PPOffers!
