By: Lindsay Fenech, Michael Last & Tejinder Singh

Social Media and the Future of Sports

Definition of Social Media

The Impact Social Media Has Had On Sports - Troubled Players Athletes Who Use Social Media - Interaction

How Teams Can Broadcast Their Image On Social Media -past advertising - new ideas

Conclusion

Agenda

‘interaction among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks’

What is social media?

The Impact Social Media has Made On Sports

Social Media has created a new experience for sports fans, now with the click of a button. Fans can follow and read everything their favourite athlete or team says. Lebron James (@KingJames) has 10.6 million twitter followers. Everything he says 10,6 million people will read.

The Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) have 176,003 followers on twitter. The sabres use social media to update fans with game scores, promotions and give away’s. The Sabres have control over what is posted and how they broadcast themselves. With this new media hub, teams can motivate their players with positive messages and greetings from fans

With the massive increase in social media, teams have a chance to broadcast their brand.

Recently the Sabres released new jerseys to the world via twitter and facebook. These jerseys have received massive hate among the fans on facebook calling them the ugliest jerseys every released. Players regularly read posts and it has brought both negative and positive reactions to the comments

Social media allows fans the ultimate in depth experience for teams, players and fans. All of which are crucial to sports and keeping them popular. Social media can make a huge impact on sports; players receive feedback on performance instantly by fans.

An example if this is Tyler Seguin. An NHL player for the Dallas Stars, he formerly played for the Boston Bruins.

Seguin was in a slump during the regular season, many fans took to social media to express their displeasure with Seguin. The year continued with Seguin regaining some form by the end of the season.

During the season, Seguin was traded to the Dallas Stars after never reaching his potential. Upon his arrival to Dallas he tweeted ‘Only steers and queers in Texas, I am not a cow’.

Tyler Seguin was also known for his excessive party habits.

http://www.sportsgrid.com/nhl/tyler-seguin-trade-dallas-stars-boston-bruins-party-too-much-drink-club/ Article on Tyler Seguin, reasons as too why he got traded

This landed Seguin in large amounts of trouble among fans as this is the most recent of many ignorant tweets. This plateaued with Seguin deleting his twitter account.

He has re-joined the instagram world since deleting his twitter.

Tyler Seguin is just one of many players who have landed in deep trouble because of social media posts. Many athletes have vowed to never join social media due to the chances of hacking and inappropriate posts

JP Arencibia is another player on the list of athletes who have quit social media due to hassling and other issues. Arencibia plays catcher for the MLB Toronto Blue Jays

Much like Seguin, Arencibia was going through a funk on the diamond. He was hitting poorly and was playing the field just as bad. He was batting .219 with 5 errors and had allowed 34 stolen bases.

In dramatic fashion Arencibia left twitter by tweeting ‘It’s unfortunate to see how words are twisted to make false stories, I give way too much of myself to have others try and make me out to something/someone I’m not’.

Obviously affected by fans and rivals comments, Arencibia had enough and decided to focus surely on baseball without the extra issues that social media brings.

After JP deleted his twitter account he began a hot streak raising his batting average up to .230. Fans were starting to be happy with their catcher, but it was short lived

Arencibia ended the season

batting .194, which by Major League standard is very poor. Fans retook to twitter to again criticize JP some going such extreme measures as to saying he should be traded.

Currently JP is still a member

of the Toronto Blue Jays organization. For how long is still up in the air.

Both Arencibia and Seguin are examples of Athletes that have allowed social media to affect their game, weather it be performance or comments among fans.

Arencibia is known as a fan

favourite for his work with the community, however when it comes down to it if a player is doing poorly, the fans will let them know. No matter what the excuse.

Seguin was traded from the defending Stanley Cup Champions to a middle of the road team because of his poor performance on and off the ice. His mother also had to intervene and give her opinions about her sons trade.

There will always be fans

expressing their dislike of a player and there will be a player who lashes back with criticism. Social Media just allows a one way communication tool to allow this.

Players are finding themselves in

more and more trouble via social media for posting everything from explicit material to ignorant racism.

With the popularity that social media possess anything can go viral and anything can be seen. Many players still do not realize this is leading coaches to ban players from using social media.

Social media will forever hold a place in sports both positively and negatively. It can be used to announce games, stats, contests and much more. This creates a positive energy from teams which helps players on and off the field or ice.

If used correctly social media can be the future of sports and player fan relationships

However if used incorrectly it can spell the end of a player’s time with a city or potentially end their career.

Social media is vast growing hub in the present scenario and almost each every sportsmen or athletes is somehow connected with the social media.

How Many Athletes Use Social Media?

Famous Athletes Who Are Active On Social Media

More and more Athletes each year put their private life on social media to interact with their fans. This part of the presentation will show who uses social media and what they use.

Lance Armstrong

Lance, is far and away, the earliest athlete adopterof social media stages and requisitions. His foot shaped impression and substance creation goes crosswise over stage however is not anchored by his particular web experience. He utilizes socialstages reciprocally for his Livestrong cause and activity, imparting substance and presentation crosswise over encounters.

Lance Primary Social Platforms:

Michael Phelps

Phelps is the perfect athlete to grip social stages,in spite of the fact that his stage foot shaped impression is generally little. His pot embarrassment put him in a socially-awkward circumstance where he was equipped to trade in for money some goodwill. He has over 2M companions on Facebook.

Phelps Primary Social Platforms:

Maria Sharapova

Like other athlete superstars, Maria warmed up to her facebook and twitter page and is making an incredible showing advertising her strength. It might be better for her to post more regularly.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Ronaldo is the most popular among the athletes with more than 80M fans, combining the facebook fans and twitter followers. Ronaldo's close to home

His Facebook Page is the biggest Page for any games group, figure or player on Facebook and at present ranks as the thirteenth most mainstream FacebookPage worldwide. Ronaldo is nearly 12 million ahead in the social media stakes.

Truly, fan co-operation with the player was through arranged, regulated situations or inadvertent, chance meets – regularly not genuine, in nature.

Interaction With The Fans In The Past

-Arranged events, signature signings -Out openly going about their day-Corporate occasions & sponsor privileges-Chance gathering at the games venue

Interaction With Fans Now On Social Media

Teams and Leagues are lifting the shroud of fame and coming to be more transparent, valid and genuine to their fans through the utilization of social media.

Fans get a look behind the celebrity aura and get the opportunity to be companions withtheir top choice teams furthermore athletes. The dialogue considers the imparting of encouragement, feedback, thought.

What’s The Value The Social Web Can Create?

A vast, measureable social foot shaped impression and transparent particular emulating, will make the athlete's brand more attractive to groups, backers and particular underwriting chances –the contender, fundamentally, turns into a media property and content platform.

Social Media gives the athlete a safe approach to communicate (in their own voice) with her/his fansto impart what's on their brain or to listen and gain knowledge from other's points of view – makes them more accessible.

Social media has been one of the most popular ways to advertise

Businesses, Music labels, and now Sports teams are taking social media by storm

The National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Football League have embraced social media and, in the process, attracted millions of fans

Broadcasting An Image On Social Media

Many professional sports leagues and teams are thriving with social media, in particular Facebook and Twitter.

The world is full of athletes from Paul Bissonnette owning the Twitterverse

The focus of social media in sports needs to be taken away from the players and pivoted to the teams.

Teams need to focus their attention to fan loyalty marketing on social media.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1764663-ranking-paul-bissonnettes-15-best-tweets-of-the-2013-offseasonPaul Bissonnette top 15 tweets

Teams are recognizing that social media is an important part of marketing their team/image

A sports franchise must claim a hashtag for their team’s discussions. This will encourage all discussion about the team to incorporate the hashtag, so everyone can easily find all the online chatter.

Toronto Maple Leafs use #TMLtalk to reach their fans on twitter

https://twitter.com/MapleLeafsMaple Leafs twitter account

*Hashtags provide a means of grouping such messages, since one can search for the hashtag and get the set of messages that contain it.

Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association may have been the first NBA team to include their Twitter account on the court. In an exhibition game, the team’s account “@Celtics” was printed on the court to drive more traffic for the franchise’s social media marketing efforts.

Past Advertising

The Mississippi State University football team printed “#HailState” in its end zones for its rivalry game with the University of Mississippi last year, rather than the team’s nickname.

The use of the hashtag was a useful social media marketing campaign that urged fans to use social media to commentate about the game

Club de Fútbol Jaguares de Chiapas, a professional soccer team in Mexico, replaced the players’ names on their jerseys with their Twitter name accounts.

The National Hockey League (NHL) has created an app for smartphones called Game Centre. This app allows fans to check game scores, the standings, and other hockey news plus much more.

This app helps to creates an image for the NHL proving they care about their fans and helping to create more of a positive image

Fans today are mobile and social, and therefore sport franchises must invest in digital transformation initiatives.

The main purpose for all of these digital actions is to monitor the conversations and increase the buzz of the game.

Loyal fans are what keeps professional sports so successful, so how do these brands keep loyal fans happy…

New Ideas

Create contests on instagram, take a picture in your teams jersey. First place is a free trip to see them play with a meet and greet. Second place is free swag

Loyal Fans will acknowledge the contest and respond to it, this will also create more loyal fans

Contests, Free Swag, Meet & Greets

A sports team could get a community manager to monitor the social media of players and guide them on what they could be sharing. This means that players will be the ones sending out messages on the team social media account, telling fans about tickets and deals creating awareness

This will not only create advertising for the team but it connect the fans to the players.

Player-Fan Interaction

An idea for at the game is to have twitter linked to the jumbo TV and to have the best tweets show up on the bottom, gets fans more involved.

‘best tweet at the game’

There is room for growth in the sports industry

Social media is the future and with it brands will become more successful

The Future..

Professional sports will become larger and larger, athletes will make millions and loyal fans will continue to follow their teams through the good and bad seasons

Someone will invent a newer and better type of social media and the social media and sports industry will continue to grow bigger together..

But for now we have facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube + more

Social media is a part of sports

Thousands of players use social media and communicate to their fans on a personal level

Some athletes need to understand what they say could be offensive and they could get into trouble (ex. Tyler Seguin )

The main focus for the future of sports is to get more attention and focus more on the team rather than the player.

Conclusion