Sports are constantly changing based on the audience’s interest or desires from the sports world to make its money. Since technology has become a large part of the world today, the sports world must change to be up to date with its followers. “The rise of social media and its popularity has come from a broader shift in the media landscape; traditional media has been supplemented with new media platforms, and the two have integrated to provide a more complex and involving media experience (Vann 440).” Social media has taken the sports world to a whole new level, it allows sports lovers to get constant updates as well as connect with their favorite franchises and players. Twitter provides instant information that is up to date to on scores and news in the sports world and even allows the fans to follow and see tweets posted by their favorite players. Before social media the fans had no idea what the athletes themselves were thinking unless they told the media in a press conference. Now fans can ask the athletes questions, see what their life consists of, make fun of them with memes, and even ask them to prom. The most important aspect of the constantly changing sports world pertains to constant updates and real life news at the fingertips of the fans. This evolution is part of a world of technology that the world is still trying to adapt to. With smartphones, fans find out news about every single team they like just by putting that team down as their favorite in the ESPN application. But, at the same time social media has increased the popularity of sports that would never have gotten the recognition if it weren’t for applications like Twitter and Facebook. Social media has affected sports in more than one way, from increased audiences, live streams, and constant updates to advertising, interaction with players, and mocking those who do wrong or funny stuff in games; social media has provided the sports world with a whole new aspect that also comes with disadvantages.

Sports have become one of the most popular forms of entertainment around the world. Each country embraces its own unique sport, great examples include South Africa and rugby plus Europe and soccer, or as they like to call it football. For the United States of America, the most popular sport has changed from baseball to American football in the past 50 years. The Super Bowl is one of the most watched sporting events in the country every year with around one hundred eleven million views in twenty seventeen. Twitter was no exception when it came to activity during the Super Bowl, “It’s everyone on the platform, meaning everyone from your peers and colleagues to sports writers and the athletes themselves, the anchors on television, celebrities—all weighing in on this one thing that’s happening in real time (Price 1).” Social media is now a leading contributor to the increased audiences in the sports world. Here are statistics to help show the increased popularity of sports, “And the influence of Twitter has been picking up momentum in the past few years. During 2013 50% of Tweets regarding TV in the United Stated, a total of 492 million Tweets were about sports events. Sports events comprised 12 of the Top 20 Most-Tweeted-About TV broadcasts during the year, according to Nielson (DiMoro 2).” Fans in America are now able to track their favorite English Premier League team by just following them on twitter. Before that not many Americans would’ve cared to make the effort to try and find the score of a soccer match between Manchester United and Chelsea. Each aspect of social media has contributed to the increased fan base of each team as well as the popularity of sports. Watching sports online is a new aspect of sports world that has its popularity starting to increase in recent years because of the popularity of smartphones.

Onto the bigger and brighter things of social media, the live stream. Live stream has been a part of the internet for a while, but sports have just started to take live streaming to another level. In the 2016-2017 National Football League season 10 games were live streamed on Twitter. This allowed people that might not necessarily have a cable package, but do have wireless internet stay connected with the game of football (Price). But even though live steams will never take over live television, it sure is supporting the claim that social media is changing the way sports are watched. Vann also references another source in writing, “Therefore, Web sites, online content, and social media are acting as ‘second screens’ to the primary broadcast via television, and are being used simultaneously by fans (Hutchins & Rowe 4).” Live streams have reached an audience that was restricted before and now can watch multiple sports including football. Most networks such as ESPN also have live streaming available for any game that is being broadcasted by an ESPN camera crew. This audience has also been merged with the people that have a cellphone plan that allows them to use data, because ESPN also allows you to watch events on your phone. Living streaming connects to social medias change in the sports world because the fans are becoming more and more aware of the live streams by users posting the links on the internet. The live stream is helping create an international fan base as well, “With U.S. sports leagues continually working to reach fans abroad, social media services are providing an affordable, no-build, means to deliver live games and video clips to fan followings that lack the broadcast TV infrastructure here (Wallace).” It also allows the internet to provide another channel into the sports world that was not previously available. Companies have started to branch into the social media scene as well while trying to advertise their company, but so have sports franchises.

One of the new ways for sports franchises to draw attention to themselves is through advertisements on social media. Even though many of these franchises have their own social media accounts that has not stopped them from paying for advertisement on every branch of social media. The most ads tend to be on Facebook, but Twitter has started to put random advertisements in the viewers live feed. The reason for this is that the sports executives have realized how much these applications mean to their fans. Alex Miller and Andrew Cave interviewed IMG representative Rob Mason and he stated, “Our work there [with FC Barcelona] told us that social media is the next great frontier for sports sponsorships. But sports rights holders need to understand their social media value, and sponsors need to know what they want from it.” This supports the fact that social media is transforming the sports advertisement scene, because putting ads into the applications allows direct interaction with the viewers and users. Sports teams are also allowing a lot of these advertisements to take place on their accounts because of the revenue that the sports teams can bring in. Advertising also allows American sports teams to get their brand out in other countries. The NFL is trying very hard to create an international fan base to bring in more revenue. What the league has done to advertise the sport is scheduling games outside of the United States. This past year there were a couple of games in Europe and then one game in Mexico. Another aspect of advertisement that social media has created is the hashtag. It allows the fans to connect with each other on twitter by searching words or phrases that pertains to the teams or the event. Most commercials today have hashtags in the corners of the television screen because they want the viewer to go on social media and search the hashtag. The sports world has also embraced this trend by putting hashtags in the corner of the screen while games are being played. This has brought another aspect of social media into the sports world and for that reason each social media channel is changing sports for the better by creating communities filled with common people attached to words or phrases. Interaction with the franchises and the players themselves has become a popular part of the sports world.

LeBron James, Tom Brady, Mike Trout, and most other athletes in the world have social media accounts. This has become a popular way for players to communicate with their fans as well as let them know what their daily lives consist of. A lot of players like to advertise their lives on all sorts of different social media applications, from Instagram to Twitter to Facebook and even some athletes have Snapchat. LeBron James is known to post a lot of stuff on social media and for that reason a lot of people follow him because they want to know what James does in his free time while he is not on the court. But the best part of these new social media channels is the interaction between the athletes and their fans. Fans are now able to tweet at their favorite athletes and hoping for a response, which is more and more likely to happen as time goes on. Players are starting to understand that being well liked and talking to their fans is a smart way to get their name out there and build a reputation that the athlete believes is what he or she stands for. Athletes are also able to stand up for they believe in, and with all the public events and issues that have come up recently, athletes are able to help address issues because of their popularity. “However, with the influence of social media in professional sports, it’s as if we are all best friends. This isn’t your dad’s sports coverage. In the seemingly never ending 21st century pool of various social networking tools, we are now closer than ever to our professional athletes, sports media outlets and other fans (Schwarz).” Aaron Schwarz writes about how social media is changing sports and why it is important to pay attention to the changes it has caused. Athletes even trash talk to each other over twitter, which was not done before unless there was a serious beef between two athletes that they would take it to the media and try and play it off as if one or the other was better than the next. Schwarz even talks about how Paul Pierce started talking trash to LeBron James after a big win by the Celtics in 2011 while James was still on the Heat. This caused a huge craze in the social media world because it was the start of trash talking on twitter. Since there it is not rare to see a couple of athletes make passive aggressive comments about another athlete on social media. Sports franchises have even jumped on the social media train by creating accounts to try and connect with their loyal fans.

Viewers often head to social media and specially Twitter when needing up to date news on their favorites sports teams. Twitter is a great place to find news on injuries and scores that are very up to date during a sporting event. Reporters have now gone to twitter to report news about anything and so have the sports teams. During the NFL season, many of the teams are tweeting during the whole game letting the fans know what is going on with hurt players or even what the coaches are saying to the reporters. So, the audiences have adjusted their way of watching sports by constantly being on their phones trying to figure out what is going on. “We also conclude that we are not destined to interact when we consume audiovisual content. We have no doubt that second screens provide added value and democratise the flow of conversations, but also highlight the attractive role of the passive viewer (Gallardo-Camacho).” What Camacho is stating is that the social media interaction has increased the enjoyability of the sporting event itself because of the constant talk between fans and reporters. Sports franchises are also using social media to give out prizes and promote opportunities for the fans to win unique prizes. Most teams will also try and sell tickets to the games through their social media accounts because they understand their fans are constantly watching and monitoring the account. The constant interaction between the team and its fans has created stronger following for teams and even enhancing one’s love for certain teams because the viewer now feels more and more a part of the franchise itself because of all the information he or she reads. With someone as public and open as social media there are always going to cons to being a part of it.

Social media has created a world where there isn’t a lot of privacy for today’s athletes because everything they do is going to be watched and criticized. Privacy used to be something that everyone had because of the laws that we live by, but since social media has become so big in the world most things are not private anymore. These athletes have the money to be able to buy privacy, but it does not even seem like they can do that because anyone can notice an athlete and post a picture to social media and start a dilemma. Athletes also have to be smart about what they post on social media because a lot of these athletes are role models for many people around the world and little kids will be watching. If these athletes make one mistake on social media it can ruin their reputation in a large way and cause many people to question the character of that person. Social media has changed a lot of how sports are being watched and followed, but there are also things that can present problems by a social media dominated world.

Technology is beginning to change the world slowly but surely and the sports world is no exception. Social media began to change the way sports were being watched because more and more people started interacting with each other while these events were going on. Then the athletes joined in on the fun and started creating their own accounts so they could speak their opinions and communicate with their fans. But that was not enough, sporting events were now being streamed live on social media websites, so that people without your typical cable package could watch their favorite teams on a day to day basis. There is more than one output when people want to go on social media and each brings its own unique aspect to the sports world. Instagram lets athletes post videos and pictures to let the fans know what they are doing in their free time. While twitter provides instant news and updates on all things sports because of all the reporters and sports teams that have accounts and keep their fans updated. Social media has affected sports in more than one way, from increased audiences, live streams, and constant updates to advertising, interaction with players, and mocking those who do wrong or funny stuff in games; social media has provided the sports world with a whole new aspect that also comes with disadvantages.
