Sports Social Media

Time and again, we are reminded just how important the professional sports industry is to worldwide cultural. While the players, coaches and owners own most of the celebrity, there's a whole other facet to professional sports that the average person never really hears about. Remembering that sports teams are major business enterprises, there is a large administrative function standing behind each organization. Aside from the agents and business managers who always seem to gain a bit of notice, the forgotten souls are the sports accounts.

Sports enthusiasts provide the target market for ESPN within the sports entertainment industry. The specific target market segment we will target for ESPN’s streaming service is busy individuals who want to keep up with sports but are unable to do so because of time constraints. The entire target market may include individuals who lack adequate access to ESPN outlets, such as “cord-cutters”. However, we will be focusing exclusively on young male individuals who are unable to fulfill their sports entertainment viewing needs due to busy schedules and a lack of time. This target market segment

Social media has made a massive impact on our culture. One of the areas that has not been affected is professional sports. In today’s world, professional sports teams and players from around the world use social media to connect with their global fan bases. Sports teams attempt to build a larger, stronger fan base by engaging fans through social media sites. Additionally, social media sites allow professional athletes to increase their marketability. However, they can also severely damage their career, personal life, and their ‘brand’ if they do not handle their social media interactions with care (Van Schaik). Twitter and Facebook allow teams and

Throughout the Michigan Sports Business Conference, undergraduate and recently graduated students were able listen to an impressive list of speakers speak about the sports industry and the digital age. This conference was able to create a smart and innovative agenda where various facets of the sport industry were discussed. Since people are extremely passionate about sports and would love to work in this field when they graduate from any university, MSBC put together this conference to attract top sport executives like Jaymee Messler, Erik Sorenson, and David Bowman to educate and develop the potential leaders of this industry. While every speaker and panel was fascinating to listen to, the speaker that was most captivating and alluring was the final speaker of the day, Jaymee Messler.

In today's media saturated culture, sports' programming has become a big business. The sporting industry, with annual revenues of over $100

Fisher, Eric. (2011). Sports Business Journal. 20 Great Uses of Social Media in Sports. Retrieved from http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2011/08/01/In-Depth/Social-media.aspx

Social media has taken the world by storm for the last couple of years and because of that a lot of major league sport teams have needed to revise or make up a brand new social media policy for their players to adhere to. Many major league players, no matter the sport, love using social media to primarily interact with their fans and with social media growing, having stricter policies on the professional players are needed in order to have control of some of the things that are being said on social media. In March of 2012, the Major League Baseball (MLB) association constructed a new social media policy, which consisted of two different policies, one for the major league players and another one for minor league players. For this paper alone,

“Nowadays, fans can buy their tickets on an MLB team’s website, follow the tweets of players, “like” behind-the-scenes photos a team posts on Facebook, comment on a manager’s moves on team-supervised blogs and get updates on open seats, new merchandise and weather for the first pitch. In turn, teams hope that by communicating through social media outlets, they can better know their fans and build a loyal customer base, win or lose” (McKeon).

Information technology has influenced sports in many ways. Not only has it influenced sports in North America but also sports across the world. “In 1988, Stan Honey, Jerry Gepner, and Bill Squadron—three former executives at News Corp. and Fox Sports—founded Sportvision (http://www.sportvision.com). They used their extensive technology, sports production, and broadcast experience to create an innovative company that focuses on developing technology-based enhancements for the Internet, sports television, and new media platforms” (Shapiro). Sportvision has impacted sports like football, baseball, basketball, auto racing, horse racing, hockey, and a wide variety of

Social media has become a very valuable marketing tool. Companies have figured out that paying a celebrity to advertise their product is smart and more affordable advertising tactic. Today's athletes have figured out a way to not only cash in by signing lucrative endorsement deals, but they are also making big money by endorsing products on social media. A company by the name of Opendorse specializes in monetizing social media campaigns for athletes. The company ranked the the top five athletes who are getting paid the most to endorse products on Twitter. Each dollar figure is based on how much the athlete receives for posting one tweet online. In order to put this into perspective, a single television advertisement costs about

In an article by Lindsay Stein titled Social media offers brands a new way to team with sports, the power of social media is shown when popular brand names use sports platforms to market their product. A company named Ignition helps companies use platforms such as the 2012 Olympics and Fifa World Cup to promote their product. Havas Media, owner of Ignition, acknowledged that these two events are a huge stage that needs to be utilized in their marketing. The biggest tool for companies to use to gain interest is the internet, which is a place for individuals that have common interest to communicate. In relation to sports marketing, sports blogs and forums are places where sports fans gather to express personal opinions. These two outlets give the sports fans a voice, and are perfect areas to market sports products. The topics in these blogs and forums vary, but the one constant is the love for sports. Ads are littered all over forums and blogs, which market all different sports brands. When researchers examine blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube it gives them an idea of expected business outcomes and aid in directing marketing towards certain social groups. Two prime examples that Stein gives pertain to a well-known insurance company, Allstate. Taylor, a sports marketing firm, helped Allstate open a Google+ Hangout. The purpose of this was to connect fans with well-known athletes during the NCAA March Madness. This was the first time in history that a brand hosted a

In today’s society, domestic and international sports are important aspects in majority of people’s everyday lives. Both professional and recreational sports have seen to grow, developing an influence on the global society. With the sports market expansion, the market competition remains very

Over a third (37%) of Twitter users will buy from a brand they follow.” With the enhanced technology that is found in our society, we constantly have it at our fingertips. Social Media is nonetheless frequently being used and onto our mobile devices. Progressively, social media accounts are created, especially on Twitter. DiMoro examines the social media effect explaining that,” Almost every team, league and sports association has a social media profile on Twitter. From the pros to the minors and from the high school athlete to the retired athlete, social media has been a force in the sports industry landscape.” The effect on social media is one way to market yourself. Therefore, it can directly influence a fan’s perception of that team or athlete. A view on Twitter statistics is quite astonishing and quotes, “During 2013 50% of Tweets regarding TV in the United States, a total of 492 million Tweets were about sports events. Sports events comprised 12 of the Top 20 Most-Tweeted-About TV broadcasts during the year, according to Nielson.” These tweets in regards to sports events are remarkable. Most people appear to be always tweeting about

Sports marketing has made its way directly to the fans. In the past, only the extremely devoted fans would check on their teams online but now, the norm has changed. Now the devoted fans learn new information before anyone else, and even get rewarded for it. In the article “The Passion of the Fan”, by Stewart Feil, fans are being rewarded for posting about their favorite teams on social media. The reason this is possible is because mobile apps have greatly contributed to the way fans follow their teams. In “Sports marketing and technology with the New England Patriots”, by Michael Krigsman, it reveals that fans have the capabilities of sending their favorite teams their input about the team. The most amazing part is their voice is being

Fitzpatrick states that over the past few years, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter have all become abruptly popular. Adults find the social networking sites benign, but for children, it opens up the door to more dangers such as bullying, and online child predators who have made the internet their hunting ground. Fitzpatrick has also gathered information that in 2003 approximately 200,000 MySpace accounts were deleted because they were to be marked sexual predators. (Fitzpatrick)