How Social Media Is Changing The Sports Media Landscape
Tom Fox blogs about the world cup for Setanta sports, is obsessed with sports and social media and also works here at Simply Zesty. He will be writing more about sports and social media in the coming months, here is his first post…
As a massive sports enthusiast, I thought it would be interesting to examine the impact social media channels have had on sport in today’s society. There is a plethora of excellent content on sporting websites and blogs all over the world, so where does social media fit in? For a start, the landscape has changed dramatically in the last five years. Before the advent of social media, following sports online was not an interactive or communal experience. This is not the case anymore.
People Are Passionate About Sport
People are passionate about sport and social media enables them to connect with others who share their passion. Sport is a topic that gets people talking and these platforms offer them the opportunity to vent frustrations and share views with people of a similar disposition. A Facebook petition to have Ireland versus France replayed attained well over 450k ‘likes’. This is a phenomenal amount of interaction. It would be very interesting to get a figure on the number of World Cup tweets in the last few weeks but it must be enormous.
I Want It Now
Twitter is very beneficial tool in regards to sporting information online as it offers the opportunity to gain more insights into your preferred sports than ever before. The current World Cup is the perfect example.
Following the right journalists provides you with instant information that was never previously attainable. We have a situation now where journalists tweet from training camps, press conferences and from the actual games themselves. This is the kind of instant information which is invaluable to sports fans. This is the first World Cup where this sort of content has been available to me and already I don’t know how I lived without it in previous tournaments! I may be an exception but the point is that never has some much material and opinion been so readily available at any football tournament in the past.
We Like It Live
I used to be a fan of the minute-by-minute renditions on various sporting websites, following games by live text updates. This was essentially a pre-cursor for twitter and showed that there was an appetite for live updates. Twitter is just an extension of this.  Used correctly, it can be a live sporting news feed from all your favourite journalists and bloggers. This is the kind of content that is very attractive to me and, as an added bonus, its instant. I now find Twitter to be the best place for updates on team news, transfers and general information – providing of course you are following the right people
Accessibility
Sports stars today are more accessible than they ever have been in the modern era. Fans have never had such an insight into the minds of their favourite athletes thanks to Twitter and many sports stars can be quite prolific tweeters. People can be fanatical about sport and attaining even trivial bits of information on your favourite athletes can be very exciting. Like any celebrity status, there is a mystique about sports stars; a fervent thirst for more knowledge on them. Rugby star Brian O’Driscoll tweeted recently that he loves the show ‘Mad Men’. I want to know this. Why? I don’t know.
My Wimbledon experience has also improved this year thanks to direct access to the likes of Andy Roddick, Andy Murray and Jon Isner. In fact, the Wimbledon 2010 app for the iPhone has included a twitter tab with links to Wimbledon tweets and tennis stars on twitter. It is a direct link to the tennis stars that are competing in the event.
Athletes using Social Media to Promote their Brand?
Whilst many professional athletes are genuine fans of Twitter as a tool, how many use it to build their brand? Some probably do, sure. They push you to things like their sponsors and personal ventures. The increased accessibility of athletes coupled with the personal touch that twitter brings makes it easy for professional athletes to promote themselves and their products. The key is that they don’t simply use Twitter to promote themselves or their brand. There must be some interaction and valuable information in there.
Alternatively, Twitter could potentially be quite destructive for a professional athlete’s brand. Sporting agents must be worried as they cannot control what their client says online and it only takes one tweet to unhinge much good work. A famous example was English footballer Darren Bent launching a twitter tirade against the chairman of his then employers- Tottenham Hotspur. The good news is we are surely in for more Twitter gaffes from sports stars in the near future.
The Perfect Match?
Ultimately, sports and social media look a perfect match. Rarely does a topic inspire such passion and discussion. Social media provides the platforms where people can share and discuss this passion with people of a similar disposition. Social media provides access not only to great sporting content but also to the athletes themselves.
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