How Social Media Affects Sports Marketing

In Chapter 12 of 13, social media expert Mike Germano discusses how social media is enhancing the sports entertainment experience by building a stronger connection between fans and their favorite players, teams, and leagues. Social media highlights the approachability of athletes. Social media also provides players opportunity to break the news, eliminating media and reporting middlemen and going directly to fans.

Erick Michielson: How’s working with sport stars and professional sports leagues shaped your expectations on how social media can enhance the entertainment experience? Mike Germano: The great thing that’s happening with social media and entertainment is the fact that, there’s a reason why unfortunately a lot of this tabloids exist like as weekly and you know—people from that tabloid. But they want to feel like they want to get to know the celebrity more. They want to—or the entertainer or the sports. They want to get to know them more. These are people you idolize. You have—the reason you have Don Mattingly baseball card in your room is because you want to be like Don Mattingly. And the fact is you put them on the pedestal. When these athletes actually get involved with social media, what they’re doing and saying, “Hey, I’m just like you. I woke up and had churros this morning. And you know what, my kid won't sleep tonight and I couldn’t get any sleep.” You know or—and they’re able to really express who they are and all of a sudden you feel a connection that you never felt before. Erick Michielson: Right. Mike Germano: And you feel, huh this guy, Oh my God—you know like Danny and Thomas and goes to the same things that I go through, you know this is unbelievable, you know and you feel connected to that athlete at least in the fact that it makes them feel like they’re just like you which is important. That’s one thing. Number two, it's about getting the right information out there. You know we talked about this all this time with athletes as they don’t have enough opportunity to break the news. You know, Kevin Love plays with Timberwolves. He’s able to—on Twitter break the news about the fact that the Timber's want to resign their coach. I think this is very scary for the press because whether you use to having you know doing an interview like this and then clipping it and they didn’t get whatever sound that they want from it, somebody that they want from it. They now have to—the players and entertainers now have the opportunity to talk directly to the fans which is that was the upper hand that the media always had because they’re the one who facilitated the outlet and now the players have that opportunity. And just we’re not seeing new breed of athlete that needs to understand what they’re public perception is, what they’re public brand is and how they interact with their fans. And more importantly, what you’re going to start happen is, you’re going to start seeing and we go back before we talked about businesses. People have large market shares and more willing to less want to take risk in social media than companies with less market share is people are new to the league and don’t have that base, are more willing to be active in it, more willing to participate in it. You know Charlie Villanueva is a great example of somebody whose not necessarily an all star super star but a good player and he's— by talking about his experience, by relating to fans and talked with them, he now has a much—you know his got a different type of base. Maybe people weren't cheering for his team, but they’re cheering for him because they personally feel connected with him because he’d have experience.