Twitter Help Info: sports

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

ESPN WTF???

Yesterday I read how the NFL was fining players who tweeted from training camp. I guess that is not surprising since the NFL is the most buttoned-up sports league and I doubt that they really get social media. As we've seen countless times, all command and control messaging. So I guess Mark Sanchez won't be tweeting during halftime a la Shaq or CV31 here.
But to see this tweet from ESPN's Ric Bucher, now that's a shock. Pretty bizarre and not very fan friendly, if you ask me.

And I agree with Twitter newbie :) Robert Scoble. This is very lame!

What do you think? Is this the new trend in uptight sports and the media who covers them?

8/4 Evening Update
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A more detailed Follow-up from the NY Times,

"The guidelines are more detailed than Bucher described them. But they restrict the freedom that ESPN employees might previously have enjoyed.

“We’ve been in the social networking space for a long time, and will continue to be there,” said Chris LaPlaca, an ESPN spokesman. “But we want to be smarter about how we do it.” He said that Bucher’s “interpretation of the policy is mistaken.”

The guidelines say that on-air talent, reporters and writers are prohibited from having sports-related blogs or Web sites and that they will need a supervisor’s approval to discuss sports on any social networking sites. They will also be restricted from discussing internal policies or detailing how stories are “reported, written, edited or produced.”

And from Mashable, a detailed report on ESPN's social media guidelines and Nate Smeltz, ESPN Publicist twitter response.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Where was the NFL?

Last night we saw one of the most exciting regular season football games in quite some time as the Jets beat the Patriots, 34-31 in overtime. Twitter was rocking, as it often does during events. Between people tweeting about their team and the #patsjets hashtag, there must have been over 1000 tweets from football fanatics. Personally, it was even better winning a bet with Jim Storer and seeing him change his avatar to the lovely NY Jets logo. I am anxious to see all of the nice Jets related comments that Jim will be making (also part of the bet).
I’ve written before about how much Twitter enhances watching a sporting event at home. it’s like watching the game in your living room with a few hundred friends. And that was certainly true last night. However, based on the Twitter brand survey that Peter Sorgenfrei and I just completed, I think there could be so much more for fans.
How great would it have been if representatives of the Jets and Patriots were tweeting along with us? Especially if it was former players. Who wouldn’t follow @CurtisMartin or @SteveGrogan? What if the tweet stream was picked up by the NFL Network and displayed on the bottom of the screen like CNN and Current did during the election. The NYTimes live blogs on the Fifth Down during games. Wouldn't you like to see their tweets during the game? Or wouldn’t it have been great to have a dedicated NFL.twitter.com page like the Twitter election page where all of the posts could be flying in, so we don’t have to keep a search window open? And I’m sure some of the NFL sponsors could get their message up on the chrome. I don’t want to focus on monetization ideas now, but this seems like a natural fit. Would the experience that I described, enhance your game watching/ Twittering? Which brands would you like to see engaging with you while you were watching the game and in what way?