New Media and Sports

The days when sport could only be watched on one of a handful of terrestrial television channels have long gone.

The Internet is now a significant medium for sport coverage, allowing fans to access the latest news about their favorite team, sport or event. The technology and means available for delivering sport to different sections of society is continuing to rapidly grow. Changes in contemporary technologies and the economics of the broadcast and print media have contributed significantly to an expansion in the volume of sports texts and to the emergence of new styles of sports writing.^[1]

The new media explosion does more than begin to make “any sport, any event, any time, any device” a viable reality for the fan. It also begins to blur the boundary between gaming and reality.^[2] The list of possible outlets for sport is seemingly endless: high definition and 3D television, IPTV, mobile phones, YouTube, web streaming, digital radio, iPlayer, games consoles, and social networking sites.

Web 1.0

Mostly a one-way read/write, centralized experience. (1997~2007)

A brand, person, company etc. builds a website, populates with content.

People visit that website to read the content but have limited ways to interact, dialogue and generate unique content to share with the site owner and other visitors.

Some interaction occurs through forums, message boards and email.

In web 1.0, users would typically browse via a singular device, the PC.^[3]

Web 2.0

The participatory, conversational, social & decentralized web (~2007-now)

The new web empowers people to interact, generate and share multi-media content across the web, seamlessly.

The web has moved from a solo activity to a series of participatory activities enabled by new web applications, platforms, technologies and methodologies.

Websites have become 2-way platforms and facilitators of people, content and conversations. In addition, these content platforms are accessible from multiple devices – the PC, netbooks, mobile phones, interactive TV, media players and gaming consoles.^[4]

Social Media

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses web-based technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogues. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein also define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content."^[5]^[6]

Fans are able to ‘scrape and share’ exclusive content with their social networks contributing to the team, league and athlete’s ‘accumulated influence’ beyond traditional media platforms.^[7]

Fans are using Social Media channels not only to consume information but also to create and interact. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Blogspot, WordPress, and Flickr can be exemplified as popular social networking channels that fans are using to interact with their teams, individuals or companies related to their teams.

According to Mashable,^[8] there are 200 million active users in Twitter. In Twitter, there are official accounts of celebrities which helps users interact with them easier and safely. World-wide famous football player Kaká, who currently plays for Real Madrid C.F. has an Official Twitter page which is followed by 2,598,450 people. (January 15, statistics). It is an amazing number for sponsors which are trying hard to reach millions of the specific segment.

Lance Armstrong, famous cyclist, has numerous of social networking account which helped him get a new sponsor for this year's Tour de France.^[9]

This change created a new term added to terminology: Fan Interaction.

Fan Interaction

This term has identified as Fan Interaction 1.0 and Fan Interaction 2.0 as the social network has developed.

At first, the interaction was limited as users were consuming the content. With Fan Interaction 2.0, the social web has created a renaissance of authentic athlete /fan interaction. Fans get a peek behind the “celebrity aura” and get the chance to be “friends” with their favorite teams and athletes. The dialogue allows for the sharing of encouragement, criticism, ideas and praise.^[10]

References