Jay Sturm and Rodrigo Amaral November 18, 2013 Financial Aspects of Sport

Case Analysis: Leagues Embrace Twitter, with Eye on Future Revenue Many sports organizations are just beginning to embrace social media and more specifically Twitter. There are still sport organizations that are against the idea of Twitter specifically and are scared of social media and what it presents. Twitter and social media in general can bring high levels of awareness to your team, but if any type of scandal presents, it can and most likely will be all over Twitter and social media, which can be difficult to manage. This high risk is leading to many sport organizations to have hesitations about embracing social media. We feel that being scared of or ignoring a rapidly evolving industry can hurt their organization immensely. We have done the research and agree with Twitter executives that they bring a new element to the sports industry particularly in public relations and marketing, as well as generating revenue and ratings. (Ourand & Fisher, 2013) Most recently the 2013 Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series saw 4.3 million tweets and 1.6 million specifically during game six, where the Boston Red Sox took the title. (Brown, 2013) The Division Series and World Series were during regular season NFL games. The division series game between the Red Sox and Detroit Tigers was on a Sunday night at the same time as the Redskins-Cowboys game. They combined for 1.1 million tweets and tens of millions of total impressions, illustrating why the social media company has become one of the most talked about brands in sports media. (Ourand & Fisher, 2013) The 2013 National Basketball Association (NBA) finals had 26.7 million tweets and game 7 averaged 150,000 tweets per minute, where LeBron James won his second NBA title. (Bennett, 2013) The largest seen so far was the NFLs 2013 Super Bowl which saw 26.7 million tweets within that one game , where the

Jay Sturm and Rodrigo Amaral November 18, 2013 Financial Aspects of Sport

Harbaugh brothers faced each other and Baltimore came away with the win. There was an average of 268,000 tweets per minute during the halftime show in particular where Beyonc performed. (Evangelista, 2013) Twitter executives state that sports account for 1 percent of TV Programming but makes up more than half of twitter conversations. When high profile events such as the NBA finals or the Super Bowl come around sports can represent around 90 percent of all TV-related tweets. (Ourand & Fisher, 2013) It is obvious as to why Twitter executives are meeting with sports leagues to try to promote that Twitter brings an increase in TV ratings. In addition to tweets, TV viewership is increasing throughout these games as well. NBCs Sunday Night Football has logged more than 22 million viewers and Foxs ALCS game averaged more than 8 million viewers. (Ourand & Fisher, 2013) Twitters main selling strategy recently has been that Twitter activity boosts TV ratings. Last month Twitter signed an undisclosed, rumored eight-figure-sum, deal with the NFL to embed football highlights, fantasy content, and other material into the microblogging site and will feature the NFL on their new advertising platform imbedded in users Twitter feed called Amplify. This deal is only for one year to allow the organization to experiment and determine if this is something they want to continue. The NFL feels that the social media industry is only going to grow and they want to be at the forefront of that growth. One of the biggest questions certain sports organizations have had are can you truly connect that just because someone is tweeting something, means they are watching what are they talking about. The MLB Advanced Media president and chief executive, Bob Bowman, feels that it may be a leap connecting the two and that assuming the two are connected isnt necessarily so. (Ourand & Fisher, 2013) He feels that the main priority is to find the right way to
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Jay Sturm and Rodrigo Amaral November 18, 2013 Financial Aspects of Sport

truly measure engagement across each platform. While these concerns are present, it has not stopped sport leagues including MLB, from making deals with twitter. Leagues feel that they dont know for sure if twitter actually boosts TV ratings, but they are eager to be a part of the conversations involving their particular games. Twitter used a Nielsen study in August to determine heighted viewership based on twitter activity. They found that 29 percent of 221 broadcast shows, across various genres, saw significant increases in their viewership due to twitter activity. This evidence has shown sports leagues that there are potential opportunities for increased revenue down the line. John Collins, the National Hockey Leagues (NHL) chief operating officer said, For us right now, its about managing the conversation and creating the national conversation around hockey so fans can better understand whats going around the league. Just because theres not real revenue today doesnt mean that we dont think there will be. (Ourand & Fisher, 2013) Hans Schroeder, NFL senior vice president of media strategy and development said, We think it ultimately not only drives incremental engagement and consumption, it will drive incremental awareness for our content, will drive incremental tune-in for our games. (Ourand & Fisher, 2013) The NBA is right with the NFL on their level of embracing social media. Melissa Brenner, the NBAs senior vice president of marketing, says, I used to joke around that monetizing social is to be akin to splitting the atom in its difficult. I can tell you thats no longer the case. Partners are specifically asking to activate our audience to reach their consumers. Increasingly, its a viable means for us to include marketing partners and grow our revenue collectively for the NBA as a league and our teams and players. (Ourand & Fisher, 2013) Previously, twitter was used in the NBA as a way to get people to tune in to close games. Thats no longer the case.
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Jay Sturm and Rodrigo Amaral November 18, 2013 Financial Aspects of Sport

Brenner says, what we found is that through twitter its not just tune in, but its also about telling players stories both on and off the court. Were finding all these creative ways where you could engage fans beyond tune-in. (Ourand & Fisher, 2013) We feel that the ultimate problem is the lack of embracing benefits of social media. As stated earlier, many sports leagues and teams feel that they cant distinguish that there are more positives than negatives to social media and they are not convinced on its worth. When doing a SWOT analysis of any problem you look at the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats of the proposed problem. There are many strengths of social media. First, it brings awareness to players and the team in general. It allows fans to connect and discuss about the team which then your team is being mentioned on the timeline of all of that tweeters followers so you are connecting to many people without any work within your company. Through social media you can also have control over your team or leagues image and public relations. By using Twitter and social media you can selectively post things about your players and coaches doing good things in the community and also announce promotions or opportunities as well as contests all through the Internet. Another strength is an increase in television viewership. There has been evidence through Twitters studies that say an increase in the number of tweets increases viewership, which is something any team or league wants to achieve. This is also in a cost effective way that cant be beat. By embracing social media you have to form a policy about it. This allows your team to have as much control as possible over an otherwise free-speech industry. Finally there have been correlations to increases in revenue. With any increase in awareness and viewership, that ultimately correlates to increases in revenue, which is by far the greatest strength.
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Jay Sturm and Rodrigo Amaral November 18, 2013 Financial Aspects of Sport

With strengths of course come weaknesses. A large weakness is the lack of control. Ultimately the league or team can control what they as one twitter account tweets out, but it cannot control what fans or even players have to say. There can be policies established that limit what athletes and staff can comment about when related to team activities, but you cannot control their free speech. What appears to be the largest risk is when a scandal happens within an organization. For example, the Aaron Hernandez murder indictment has been all over Twitter for every explicit detail involved in his case. Situations like these are unique, but can get out of hand and be daunting in any controversial situation that raises a variety of opinions. As well, as stated earlier by the MLB advanced media president and chief executive, it can be looked as a large assumption that there is a correlation between people mentioning teams or events in their tweets to increased viewership or increases in revenue. There are many opportunities with embracing social media. Twitter is in the beginning of their stages to have relationships with sports leagues so to be a pioneer in this industry could be a monumental asset for your league, team, or program. Twitter presents the potential to be an increase in revenue that requires minimal expenses. There is the opportunity to increase marketing of your team in a positive way and allowing fans to become more familiar with the coaches, players, and staff. Also an opportunity as well as strength is the potential for an increase in viewership. Of course a teams goal is to fill the stands, but for those fans that do not live in the location of the team, they will be watching on TV. Twitter presents the opportunity that as people talk about it on twitter it makes you want to change your channel so you can be a part of the conversation and that is what Twitter is banking on as their main selling point. Other opportunities are to increase conversations and the relevancy of your team and
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Jay Sturm and Rodrigo Amaral November 18, 2013 Financial Aspects of Sport

league so it is in the forefront of fans minds. With increasing conversation, you have th e opportunity to bring national attention to your program, which engages fans and brings the possibility of creating new fans. With all opportunities there are associated threats. When dealing with any type of unregulated free-speech element, you have to worry about the uniformed or misconstrued opinions that can become rampant on a micro-blogging site like Twitter. A lot can be said in 160 characters in a positive or negative way. Another threat of twitter is the possibility of false information being spread around. The amount of instances where celebrities are rumored to have died and they werent true is alarming, so as a league owner or team owner I would be concerned about the possibility of false information being spread around without the team or league realizing it until it is so far out of hand that the team has to issue a press release or deny the situation to the media. With any problem or situation there are always competitors. With Twitter there are other social media websites that propose a threat. Facebook, Instagram, MySpace, Vine, and Tumblr are the top five most competitive social media outlets despite that they are not micro-blogging websites. Teams can use these other forms of social media they have different elements of interaction and control. Finally, you have to worry about a negative image being correlated to your team if you dont embrace social media, but also if you dont properly handle it. When evaluating this situation we feel that there are three potential solutions. First would be to have a plan and embrace social media and involve it within your team or league. Second would be to deal with it as it comes. There are going to be situations where social media comes into play and you deal with those as they arise and otherwise it is not a day-to6

Jay Sturm and Rodrigo Amaral November 18, 2013 Financial Aspects of Sport

day operation within your company. Finally the third option would be to avoid it and not have a plan at all and to have the opinion that social media is only a negative thing and you dont want to involve social media at all. We feel that option one: having a plan and embracing social media for your team or league is the optimum way to go. The positive outcomes far outweigh the negative ones. The possibility of increasing television viewership, increasing revenue, formulation of policies, increasing image and public relations as well as increasing player and team awareness. There can be pioneers on the concepts, relevant conversations that are up to date with technology and initiate national conversation. It is ultimately a win-win situation. The threats and weakness are outweighed by the strengths and opportunities. When considering a lack of control, you can contradict that by having policies at the forefront that determine how your employees and players are to use social media. The evidence of how there is a correlation between social media and increased revenue and viewership is just beginning and will continue to support the concept was more research is done. Social media allows an immediate response from your organization when dealing with misconstrued negative opinions and false information. It allows the record to be set straight directly from the organization immediately without the need for calling a press conference. It is seen that the industry is on the cusps of determining ways to determine how to measure profit from social media. We feel that this is the best way to evaluate effectiveness of our solution. This type of research is just beginning so it is not an immediate response, but we feel it will offer the most validity and reliability to back up social media platforms arguments.

Jay Sturm and Rodrigo Amaral November 18, 2013 Financial Aspects of Sport

In conclusion, we feel that social media can be an asset as long as the organization is willing to accept it. Regardless of opinions, social media is at the front of many peoples thoughts and fingertips and are used ridiculous amounts daily. Teams and organizations need to embrace this concept as with any technology and use it to their advantage. There are always going to be proponents to any idea. What sports organizations need to determine is how they can benefit from social media and weight the benefits to the costs of not having a plan.

Jay Sturm and Rodrigo Amaral November 18, 2013 Financial Aspects of Sport

Sources Bennett, S. (2013, June 24). 26.7 million tweets sent during nba finals, 150,000 tweets per minute game 7 peak. mediabistro. Retrieved from http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-nba-finals_b45292 Brown, M. (2013, October 31). Game 6 that sees red sox win world series a massive tv ratings homerun. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2013/10/31/game-6-that-sees-red-sox-winworld-series-a-massive-tv-ratings-homerun/ Evangelista, B. (2013, February 3). Twitter roared with 24.1 million tweets during super bowl xlvii. SFGate. Retrieved from http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/02/03/twitterroared-with-24-1-million-tweets-during-super-bowl-xlvii/ Ourand, J., & Fisher, E. (2013). Leagues embrace twitter, with eye on future revenue. Sports Business Journal, Oct 21-27, 1.