Social Media: Why Simply Watching The Game Isn't Enough Anymore

Not too long ago, watching sports meant sitting on the couch and tuning into the game of choice.  When commercials came around, you would probably turn to another game (if you were lucky enough to have another), or you would turn to some other show until the game came back on.

Things are different today.  The Internet has given us access, sometimes limited access, to other games—whether it be highlights, commentary, behind-the-scenes access, or scores of other games.

The real advancement in sports today is social media, more specifically, Twitter.  Take the NFL for example.  Each NFL team has a Twitter account, each expert on that team has an account, and those highly invested in those teams will follow what accounts they can to get real-time updates.

After the games, you get opinions and feelings from actual players, which for the news media, changes the way they can cover the sport.  You can watch the relationships between players on different teams develop, whether it be the camaraderie among competitors, or trash talk.

Twitter has also become a hub for gaging opinions from fans and the media.  After this years “Fail Mary,” where the referees botched the final call in the Packers-Seahawks game, people took to Twitter in an uproar.

The next step in the evolution of social media in sports is already in development.  Fans of the soccer team Sporting Kansas City will be able to access different camera angles of the game and send them to friends, from a service provided inside LiveStrong Sporting Park.  If the MLS can do this, I don’t expect the NFL, MLB, or NBA to be too far behind.

The evolution of sports spectating, to me, is very similar to the evolution of marketing.  Watching the sport isn’t enough anymore, just like seeing a commercial isn’t either.  Through social media, we now have a relationship with what we’re seeing and can interact.