This study examines whether following popular Nigerian sports betting influencers on social media is a financially sound strategy. To avoid the survivorship bias that occurs when influencers only share their winning bets, we tracked 5,467 pre-match betting slips from three prominent tipsters on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram. We verified the outcomes against official Stake.com records, resulting in a final dataset covering approximately $4.8 million in tracked bets. We analyzed raw performance, assessed risk based on odds sizes, and applied four common staking strategies (Flat, Inverse, Square Root, and Fixed Return) to simulate realistic follower outcomes. The results show a sharp contrast between the wealth these influencers display online and the actual financial results. The influencers themselves collectively lost 25.24% on their promoted bets, while a follower who staked the same amount on every tip would lose 38.27% on their investment. Across all tested strategies, following these influencers consistently led to significant financial losses. These findings raise serious consumer protection concerns in Nigeria's expanding gambling market.

翻译：本研究旨在探究关注尼日利亚社交媒体上的热门体育博彩影响者是否构成一种财务上明智的策略。为避免影响者仅分享获胜投注时产生的幸存者偏差，我们追踪了来自X（原Twitter）和Telegram平台三位知名预测员的5,467份赛前投注单。我们根据官方Stake.com记录验证了投注结果，最终构建了一个涵盖约480万美元追踪投注的数据集。我们分析了原始表现，基于赔率大小评估了风险，并应用了四种常见投注策略（固定金额、反向、平方根和固定收益）来模拟真实粉丝的投注结果。研究结果揭示了这些影响者在网上展示的财富与实际财务结果之间的鲜明对比。影响者自身在其推广的投注上集体损失了25.24%，而若粉丝对每项预测投注相同金额，其投资损失则达38.27%。在所有测试策略下，跟随这些影响者均持续导致重大财务损失。这些发现对尼日利亚不断扩张的博彩市场中的消费者保护问题提出了严重关切。