No Twitter and Facebook for England Team in the Ashes(?) - Athletes and the Issue of Social Media
We live in the age of social media (blogs, social networking sites and the like), from Facebook to Blogger to the immensely popular and always in the news Twitter. It is obvious that athletes would get in on the act as well and would naturally be using many different forms of social media. But this is the point where it all gets a bit fuzzy. Some professional sports teams have banned the use of Facebook and Twitter, while others say it is absolutely fine to use. Even the Olympics got mixed up in this and had to issue guidelines as to what was acceptable and what was not. Regardless of prohibitions, though, in the future, the use and ubiquitous nature of social media will just grow and it will become an even bigger part of sports.
This debate arises with recent news from the sport of cricket. For the upcoming Ashes Series to be played soon, the England team has reportedly banned its players from using any sort of social media until after the entire series is over. This was in response to fears that players could inadvertently reveal team secrets and locker-room strategies to their fans. The Australians responded by giving their team the all-clear in the use of social media. It was interesting to see that the two countries had even started a contest on the use of social media. The problem for the English side and many other sports teams seems to be how easy it is to update statuses or post a tweet or write a blog; most of these things can be done on a person’s phone. It has become so easy that there was the fear that secrets and strategies would get out.
College sports seem to be affected by this in a big way. Social media is the domain of the young, and with so many of them living out their lives online, it was bound to end up in college sports all over the world. The big sports leagues are taking the cue from college level sports all over America and abroad. The NBA has banned the use of social media updates 45 minutes before a game starts and lasting until the end of a player’s postgame duties. Former Texas Tech University football coach Mike Leach had also authorized a blanket ban on the use of social media and had forbidden it from his locker room. Other coaches are not so strict; they understand the addiction and need that a lot of students have with social media and they allow it as long as players use their commonsense when updating and posting things to websites.
Even the Olympics were not spared from the social media mess that is currently gripping the sports world. A lot of Olympians had been confused about what they could post online and many thought they could not use social media at all during the entire Games. In fact, it turns out that the Olympics does not restrict the use of social media at all, but does not allow a user to post pictures of brands that are not official sponsors. Also, it is forbidden for an athlete to act as a journalist and it is fine if they write blogs or tweets in the first person. The Olympics organising committee realised early on that it is futile to try and stop people from using social media; a ban was just not enforceable and was actually pointless at the end of the day.
It seems the problem revolves around the media and the huge sums of money they pay to cover events. If a television network is the exclusive sports news partner of a major sporting event, athletes tweeting and posting updates can ruin their exclusivity. They lose money in the process and media coverage just becomes a free-for-all. But this too is futile; the big news companies can try to stop it but they cannot ever crush the advancing behemoth that is social media. They will have to adapt and evolve if they do not want to get swallowed whole. The days of restrictive sports media are over.
Social media will continue to play a big part in the future of sports. Athletes will use it as a way to connect on a personal level with their fans, and coaches will keep on trying to ban the use of it from locker rooms. What happens to sports and social media in the future will be a very interesting update.
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