From SportsBusiness Journal, USA Today, and Forbes
Analysis by Griffin Waugh in SRM 334 (section 1)
Recently, Twitter hired former Professional Bowlers Association CEO Geoff Reiss to be the head of sports partnership. This comes at the same time as Twitter filling its initial public offering. As a publicly tradable company, Twitter is estimated to be worth $12 Billion and wants continue grow its connections with other entities. Reiss will now help Twitter to gain a larger hold on various media companies. They already have deals with media outlets like ESPN and Fox Sports. Reiss has an experienced background with creating major sporting deals, such as when he convinced ESPN to extend its contract with the PBA as well as to show more bowling telecasts on the ESPN family of networks throughout the year.
The second article I read dealt with how Twitter has set itself up for success. Twitter has based its profitability off of its advertising revenue and its connections with other entities. So far Twitter has already begun partnering with content providers like ESPN, Turner Sports, MLB Advanced Media and many more. By creating this partnership with these companies, Twitter can then help to readjust the way these providers deliver their material. We have seen this already with ESPN on college football game days. Instead of just posting game casts, drive summaries and stats on their main website. They now post short clips of all the big plays going in the football games on that particular day.
This growth of Twitter has changed the media and the way we receive content forever. We now live in an information driven society that constantly is looking for the fastest and easiest to get what we want. These two articles provide us with another example of just that. As Twitter continues to grow and partner with content providers they will help change the way we receive this information. Geoff Reiss may be a key cog in helping to create this shift in the way content providers get their information out quickly and in short bits. This is similar to what we have seen in class with other forms of media. Radio at one time was the primary way in which people heard about sports. That slowly changed with the rise of the television and society becoming more image driven. As Twitter continues to grow its capabilities and connections, we should see a change in the way media provide their content. Not to different from a short 140 character tweet, the information we receive on sports will become shorter and more highlight driven. In order to satisfy the needs of sports fans.
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Analysis by David Hoye in SRM 334 (section 1)
Twitter has become one of the most popular websites visited today, with over 550 million users. In the sports world, millions of fans follow their favorite athletes, coaches and reporters, to receive up to date information and entertainment throughout the day. Just like any social media site, not all good comes from using the account. Many athletes, college specifically, have gotten into trouble with their tweets. Dealing with criticism has been difficult as student-athletes receive more recognition and stardom. Any fan can tweet at these college athletes, expressing brutal opinions on their performance.
An article in USA Today focuses on Willie Cauley-Stein, a University of Kentucky basketball star that ended up deleting his twitter account, resulting from the negative tweets directed towards him during an underachieving freshman season (Auerbach). This happens all the time in college athletics. Some coaches at major programs don’t even allow players to tweet during season. This is done in a way to protect them from any distraction or emotional and mental harm they’d receive from fans. Assistant Professor Blair Browning from Baylor said, “(Twitter) can be a really constructive, positive tool but we need to train and educate our student-athletes instead of putting all this money toward being watchdogs."
This really questions the fact if athletes should have Twitter at all. It can bring a lot of negativity to a player, team, and even university with the things that are said on timelines across the globe. It will be interesting to see if Twitter will be used continuously in the future if such controversy keeps occurring.
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