Social media has had a huge impact on everyone’s life in this day and age, we cannot seem to escape it, it is everywhere and everyone utilizes it. At first social media was a place for the younger generation to interact, such as on Facebook, which based its model off of MySpace which was more for music sharing. LinkedIn has also been a game changer in the corporate industry as it was a way for companies and employees to interact within a company or to make connections with outside organizations or possible recruits. Now though even Sport organizations are utilizing social media to its fullest and probably paving the way for many new ideas online.

When ever you are on a social media site you always see an advertisement, post, information or a contest relating to a sport organization. And this is not just limited to the Big Four Leagues, but also their minor league subsidiaries and other sporting leagues across the world.

Being a New England Patriots fan I am always seeing certain pieces of information, marketing and other various pieces from the Patriots on social media such as Facebook. They always seem to kick up their social media campaigns leading up to a game or after a big victory. There has been several times this year that they have used Facebook as an intermediary to raffle off tickets against various opponents at home, and if they just used their website that might not be enough. Consumers for sports aren’t going to be continuously checking their teams website or their emails for updates, they want things put right in their faces. That is what sport teams are doing now, they know where we spend most of our time and that’s online throughout the day, and to reach us they must have an effective social media campaign. But normally there’s a catch, sign up to win a pair of Patriot tickets for the next home game, but you must also submit to receive notifications about upcoming promotions and information on the team.

So not only are teams using social media to engage the fan base more, but they are doing it also to educate the fans on the teams history and background. This is done in an attempt to grow the consumer basis and make it even stronger then before.

Sports now a days cant just relay on television ads and print ads to draw in new consumers and keep their current target market in the loop.  With the use of mobile apps and people being glued on there phones 24/7 now, the sports industry has had to develop new ways to market their products. Such as on the ESPN application you receive pop up application before you can continue to certain stories and parts of the application. This provides a way for certain teams, parents company’s and sponsors to promote the products they are attempting to market in this new day and age.

Sport teams are now allowing more interactivity with fans based off of new mobile marketing plans, fans no longer have to sit at a game to receive in game updates and receive key highlights. Mobile marketing is also low cost and very effective, which saves sports organizations and sponsors money when producing these pieces. It can be something as simple as background pictures, ringtones, notifications and other various player updates. Since most people are always within inches of their phone this has become the most effective marketing tool to reach fans in this tech savvy environment.  Through mobile marketing you can use several different key tools to reach your consumers: (Mobile sites, SMS, Ad banners, Paid searches, Apps and QR codes). Given this day and age that we live in television ads are becoming phased out and over priced and mobile marketing is on the rise as its low cost and highly effective and this trend will continue to rise in the future until it overcomes traditional marketing measures.

In sport there are countless viral videos that go up daily, from professional constructed ones, to every day fans posting something of their favorite sport, league or team. What a viral video most do is evoke emotions from the viewer and be strong/awesome. When designing a video you must make it fall into one of the following three themes: Parody of something popular/Cute as a…/Did that just happen. The hardest thing for any company to do and this goes for Sport Leagues as well is do no make it into an advertisement and content trumps quality, always.

The best viral video I have seen in awhile is the NFL Bad Lip Reading. No what does this have to do with football? Absolutely nothing! Yet why do so many people want to watch it, well for starters it isn’t an advertisement saying “Come watch the NFL!”, no, its a parody of something popular (ding, ding. one of the key themes for a viral video). The video takes various plays and interviews from around the NFL and dubs over them to create comedic relief. The video is not trying to market the NFL to you, instead take a popular piece of our culture and turn it into a viral phenomenon. Now how does this benefit the NFL, since its making so many players and coaches look ridiculous, well it’s free publicity. Even though it is not specifically advertising for the NFL, it is still advertising the NFL subliminally to all of those who watch the video. Those who would not of necessarily watched  something to do with the NFL now might, and by word of mouth spread the video to other viewers. This can create new potential customers for the NFL, as these viewers might now tune into games and possibly try creating their own viral video. Overall it depends on the context of the viral video and in this instance were the creator is attempting to make people laugh it does benefit the sport and can draw the viewers in the watch the sport itself or look for more videos on the NFL in general.

For your viewing pleasure

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRqKYXcL-2U&list=RDZce-QT7MGSE&index=2
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zce-QT7MGSE

When looking into the United States, the professional sports world is dominated by four leagues, NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL. Each brings their own aspects to the world of sports, whether its strategy, entertainment, energy/aggression, or a combination of the latter. The NFL by far is the most profitable league and the strongest in its following. The NFL has made sure to create a well rounded sport that keeps the spectator entertained year in and year out; with modified drafts, rule upgrades/changes, input from fans, high velocity and attempting to be a standard for the community (Even though they have come under fire in the past several months).

But yet in every other part of the world, the professional sports leagues are dominated by MLS, so why not in the United States? The United States has one league for the entire country, and if we were to travel to Great Britain, they have several of their own; why the discrepancy? Over the years with a fast past American Culture the game of soccer has been to slow for many to pick up and start viewing, various rules that didn’t make sense and the overall lack of entertainment.  After reading several articles, some key points jumped out at me as to why Americans truly hate soccer, way too many turnovers and they happen so quick, the games are very low scoring, it typically takes an entire game to score a goal, and the penalty system seems to strict even for us avid NFL fans. In other words, to grasp the modern American and immerse us within the culture of MLS the leagues most focus on these key attributes, even though ,yes, the younger generation has seen a spike in MLS viewing; how long will that truly last.

MLS should consider their penalty structure and make rules less subjective and more objective, with the ability for reviews from those we never have heard of or seen. The games need to be more fast paced; Americans don’t have the time or patience to devote to a game that is going to drag out for over 2 hours and be so lacking in luster and energy and produce a typical score of 1-0. Overall, MLS has come a long way in the US, but to really break ground and get a concrete fan base, they must revisit some key attributes of the basis of the game itself, if they truly wish to be among the top four leagues in America.

With media evolving constantly everyday we have more and more access to various inside information and into peoples daily lives. One of the big pieces here is being able to engage and see what goes on in athletes lives and how they act. A big topic we all have heard about is Johnny Football and his antics off the field, we knew about his habits even before he made it in the NFL. There would be various photos of Johnny Manziel posted what it seemed daily of his various night activities, in doing so this hurt his public image and credibility among his peers and current NFL players. Many combated back saying how the young quarterback needed to grow up and learn to stay out of the lime light. But this is obviously easier said then done as we have seen so many other times with established athletes hashing it out via twitter. Overall the involvements on athletes through twitter can be positive or negative, but as we see the negative posts are always the ones that get the most attention. When athletes discuss helping charities and other events of that nature they are over looker, but when two high profile players hash it out over the web then it blows up and everyone knows about it. Athletes overall need to monitor what they are putting out on social media, such as twitter, and need to be conscious to filter their posts/responses. Athletes get caught up in the moment of the game and that translates to their reactions on twitter towards others, whether its fights with players or even some fans. They have to realize that there are many younger players who look up to them and see this behavior and they need to be better role models for them. Because as I said earlier there are many good acts that athletes talk about on twitter, but they are easily over looked when a scuffle between two high profile athletes erupt because they are not conducting themselves in a professional manner.

One thing we have been focusing on over the past few days with new media is the harm it can/has caused us and those around us. Such as in the Ray Rice case, how new media has revealed to the whole world the raw facts that no one wanted to believe. But how has new media designated to the lower levels of play, such as College athletics? Well sure you can argue that in some cases it has harmed some groups/ individuals, but it has also done a lot of good. With new media no matter where you are in the world you can acquire information about your favorite team, whether that is Ohio State and you live in Florida or BC and your from England. No matter where you are in the world new media has made all the information about our favorite teams readily available at our fingertips. Not only that but the colleges who utilize their own sites/apps can market their organization effectively to the fan base to draw more attention to their program. This has been done very effectively at LSU, where their Mascot has not only his own webpage, but his own brand which has been created through “his” facebook and twitter. The things people/organizations will do in order to increase awareness about their program is amazing in this day and age.

Hello all my is Sean Reinold, and I am in Tracy Schoenadel’s Sport and New Media class. This first assignment we were asked to complete involved us not utilizing certain technology such as web browsers, e-mail, texting, etc. This project was to being at 5PM on September 5th and run to 5PM on Sept 7th, to be honest I forgot at first and didn’t end up starting until about 6PM on Sept 5th. It was hard at first, I wanted to text my friends to see what everyone was doing Friday night, send some snap chats and read up on articles on Sport Center. It was easy, though, living without Facebook and other Social Media sites, but it was more challenging to not be able to easily talk with all my friends. Because you can call someone, but now a-days people wont answer phone calls, and they’ll just send you a text message back. Going on to later in the evening on Friday, I would forget at times that I could not use Apps on my phone, and I would occasionally send a snap chat to my friends, then right away I would realize that I had just broken the rules of this challenge. After the initial 24 hours I reintroduced Texting, as out of everything this was the major piece of technology that I felt like I had missed/needed the most. I realized I could live without all of the other technologies, it would be nice to use some of the sport applications on my phone but not a necessity. Overall this was an eye opening challenge for me, at times I would forget and use texting and some applications on my phone and it really goes to show you how hard it is in this day and age to separate ourselves from the technology that surrounds us.