While the whole nation was trying to pick the winner, we used social listening and ranked Tweets on individual horses, trainers and jockeys to help inform the bets of irregular punters. No one had ever seen a virtual horserace driven by Twitter before.

The TAB Melbourne Twitter Cup wasn’t just entertaining; it was also a genuinely useful tool for TAB’s audience as each horse offered the opportunity to bet with live odds and current commentary. Suddenly the wisdom of the crowd on Twitter was alive and racing for all to see and TAB owned the excitement of Australia’s greatest race.

Amazingly 8 days out from the race, the wisdom of the Twitter crowd predicted the actual Melbourne Cup winning horse Fiorente with a clear margin.

This social experiment reached 1.7 million Australians and allowed the TAB to organically trend on Twitter during the hype and speculation before the race.

Our brand was discussed more across the Melbourne Cup than all of our competitors put together and created an 18% uplift in online betting with the TAB compared to the same period last year.

TAB owned the excitement of Australia’s greatest race, reaffirming its status as Australia’s leading betting company.