Social media, for all its downfalls, has proven to be a powerful tool for organizations to interact directly with customers and fans. This is especially true for athletes, musicians, and other celebrities—people love communicating directly with their favorite icons via Twitter and Facebook. The celebrities seem to enjoy it, too. Just look at the camaraderie that THE_REAL_SHAQ (Shaquille O'Neal) has built on Twitter. Even I follow him, and I don't care about basketball anymore.
Unfortunately for professional athletes, their respective sports leagues haven't always been receptive to this whole social media "thing." Like many corporate overlords, some sports leagues have run screaming from the idea of allowing their assets—that is, the players—to tell the world what's going on right this minute, especially if this minute is happening during a game or at a team's facility.
Other leagues, however, have embraced the world of social media as a way to generate more interest and ultimately a larger fanbase. Which American sports leagues get it, and which need to be hit with a social networking clue-by-four?
National Football League
The NFL has made headlines lately for its aggressive anti-Twitter policies and enforcement. In July, the league clarified that it forbade players from tweeting during games, but that this wasn't a new policy—it was an extension upon an already-existing policy against the use of cell phones while a game is in progress.
This irritated Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco, who had previously expressed an interest in embracing Twitter—especially during games.
"If I tweet during the game and they suspend me, would I get paid during my suspension since it's not a legal issue?" he asked on Twitter immediately following the announcement. He then came up with a plot to have a fan in the stands tweet under his account when he signaled from the field to do so.
This might have worked better if he had perhaps not tweeted about it—the NFL later updated its policy, stating, "No updates are permitted to be posted by the individual himself or anyone representing him during this prohibited time on his personal Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media account."
So, not only can players not tweet during the game, they also can't post updates for the 90 minutes before and after a game or (presumably) during halftime. And it's not just players; coaches, officials, and even press must stay away from their phones, too, else they get a slap on the wrist. Incidentally, fans who are watching the game are not prohibited from using Facebook, tweeting, or texting during the game.
National Basketball Association
As with the NFL, the NBA announced in late September that players, coaches, and team personnel would be forbidden from using cell phones and other handhelds during games. In this case, "during games" counts the 45 minutes before the game and 45 minutes after the locker room doors have opened to the press once the game has ended. It includes halftimes and timeouts.
The NBA is slightly more forgiving than the NFL, however, in that it specifies that each team can adopt its own rules if it so chooses when it comes to practices, meetings, and other team events.
That's the good news—the bad news is that a number of teams, including the Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Clippers, and Milwaukee Bucks, have all decided to ban social media updates during any team time, including practices. Players who violate the rules risk being fined, although a number of players (including Shaq) don't seem to be worried about the ban just yet.
NCAA/SEC
The Southeastern Conference (SEC), which participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was one of the first major sports organizations to target the fans' social media behaviors instead of just going after players.
In August 2009, the SEC announced that ticket-holding fans could not say anything about the game in question on the Internet—this included personal observations, descriptions of the goings-on, pictures, audio, or video. In essence, a fan could not tweet from the stands and say "Wow, that was a great play!" or snap a fuzzy cell phone photo and e-mail it to Flickr.
Needless to say, this policy incited outrage among pretty much everyone interested in SEC games. Because of the outrage, the SEC backed off on its initial policy within days. A revised policy was eventually published, specifying that fans can't disseminate realtime information about a game for commercial purposes or as a substitute for TV or radio (uh, okay).
"Personal messages and updates of scores or other brief descriptions of the competition throughout the Event are acceptable," the SEC said.
National Hockey League
The NHL, on the other hand, has so far taken a welcoming approach to social media. The NHL's Manager of Club Consulting and Services, Mark Schultzm told Sales Direction earlier this year that some teams are quite active on services like Twitter while others have yet to jump in, but the league in general seems to be pretty social media-friendly.
The NHL helped organize NHL Tweetups earlier this year, a site focusing on getting Twitter-using fans together to watch various NHL games. More recently, the NHL ran a contest on Twitter to give away tickets to fans.
Unlike the other leagues, the NHL has yet to announce an official policy banning (or allowing) the use of Twitter and Facebook during games or practices, though it seems inevitable that such a policy will arrive in the future. However, given the league's current attitude towards online engagement, whatever policy is adopted may well be more friendly towards social media.
Major League Baseball
One league that's in the middle is Major League Baseball. Not only has the MLB put out a rather popular iPhone application that has social media tools, but the organization also maintains an active Twitter account.
However, the MLB has already spent more than a year trying to curb realtime reporting on games from reporters, in the form of blog posts or cell phone pictures or anything in between. Media can post no more than seven photographs from any games—no photo galleries—and audio/video is limited to two minutes with no streaming (the MLB does its own streaming through the aforementioned iPhone app and through its own website).
A number of players tweet regularly (while others hide from the Big Bad Internet), and the MLB actively promotes those players' Twitter accounts on its own website. So long as no one overdoes the live game updates and photos, it seems like the MLB will stay out of their hair.
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