The 49ers are a Super Bowl contender heading into the 2023 campaign. Even with the tumult in their quarterback room that’s more misunderstood than understood nationally, virtually every preseason prognostication has them in the top tier of teams that will be in the hunt for a Lombardi Trophy come January.
BetOnline did some research and released an interesting new way to display preseason Super Bowl predictions. They tracked social media trends to create a map that shows which team each states believes will win Super Bowl LVIII.
Here’s an explanation of their methodology via BetOnline:
Over the past 30 days, the online sportsbook tracked tweets, hashtags and direct keyword phrases about who will win the Super Bowl this year. For example, collected all tweets surrounding the Super Bowl such as, “The Cowboys will win the Super Bowl,” “Cincinnati will win the Super Bowl,” “The Bengals will win the Super Bowl,” etc.
More than 100,000 tweets were analyzed in the study. Those tweets were geotagged within the U.S. so they can see each state’s prediction to win Super Bowl LVIII.
San Francisco is one of four teams with more than five states on their side. The Chiefs lead the way with 12 states in their corner. There are 10 states predicting the Eagles will win it, while seven states have the 49ers and Bills taking the title.
The Bengals (five), Cowboys (three) and Vikings (two) are the other teams with multiple states backing them.
Here are the seven states picking the 49ers:
California
While there are three teams in the state with another one (the Raiders) that has a strong following, the 49ers are the most successful club of the four. They’re also the only one of the four with a championship that has never moved out of the state. They’re also the best of the four teams. So, this one makes a ton of sense.
Hawaii
Donate to the Maui Strong Fund via the Hawaii Community Foundation here.
Idaho
The potato farmers have spoken. It’s a little surprising that they didn’t lean the Seahawks’ way (more on this later).
Nevada
The Raiders haven’t quite won the hearts and minds of Nevadans, although Reno up north is, from a fan standpoint, probably much more 49ers heavy than Las Vegas is Raiders heavy.
Oregon
This is probably a bunch of Arik Armstead/Deommodore Lenoir fans. It’s also pretty surprising Oregon wasn’t leaning more toward their Pacific Northwest brethren in Seattle (promise there’s more on this later for real).
Utah
(Editor’s note: There was a joke here about how big of a surprise it is that there’s internet in Utah that we’ve decided to remove in case they still have a little internet left and read this post).
Washington
(Okay, here’s the more!)
Yeah! The state of Washington has the 49ers and NOT the upstart Seahawks as the winners of this year’s Super Bowl. It’s honestly super respectable that the remaining Seahawks fans know enough ball to cede the title of ‘Super Bowl contender’ to their NFC West rival.
