Social Media and Football
Social media and social networking has become a major part of everyone's lives. It was only a matter of time before it penetrated the world of sports as well, in particular the sport of football. The question is how exactly does it have an effect on sports and what are the implications of it in the long run? From players updating their statuses, to the coaches using social media, to referees getting banned from using social networks, it seems the merging of football and social networks has started.
The recent case of the Nigerian team getting banned for two years by the country's president was an interesting one. It seems now that because of a Facebook campaign to reinstate the players the ban has been dropped. The president of Nigeria has his own Facebook page and he got inundated with so many messages to revoke the ban that he had to take notice. The players should all be thanking Facebook and their fans around the world.
The first on the scene of linking social media with football were journalists and writers. They embraced the whole social side of the game by writing about it in blogs, and online and linking news information to websites and giving people information on an instantaneous basis. The journalists were able to reach a wider audience and interact and share news about football with a lot more people. When this started to happen the big news websites jumped on the bandwagon and created profiles and accounts on all the major social networks.
It is not only journalists and news organisations that are getting in on the act. FIFA also realised how popular social networks were going to be as did many football clubs around the world. The World Cup has fans on many different networks and people now have many different ways and means to interact with their favourite sports and clubs. The football club Barcelona has over 2 million fans on Facebook and Real Madrid has 1.5 million. It seems that people who use social networks like to follow the happenings of their favourite teams from wherever they are in the world.
There is another side to social networking that has the foot-balling world becoming a little wary. The foundation of social networking is to foster dialogue between people and get them to discuss their favourite teams and players. The problem in this regard is that football fans are an extremely passionate bunch and they can get very heated at times and the purpose of reflective dialogue and talking in a civilised manner will be lost. The way things are going in the world though it is inevitable that any team or any player will be able to escape the all encompassing power of social media. The best route to take would be to regulate the whole scenario and make it a meaningful and purposeful arena where people can interact with each other. Without that it just becomes a free for all.
Football coaches are getting in on the act as well by creating websites and platforms where players and fans can interact with them and each other. It is an interesting development because coaches were always seen as being unreachable by fans and they seemed distant to talk to. Now with setting up websites and ending up on social networks, it makes the coaches seem approachable and they will probably gain a larger fan following because of it.
In Italy referees are banned from making any sort of public comments until a match has finished. With the increasing presence of social networking the football governing body has extended this ban to include websites, blogs, social networks and even using phones to update statuses. Referees will now be banned from making any sort of comments on all the different media outlets out there. It used to only be newspapers and journalists that the governing body was concerned about but now they have taken all forms of social media on board.
Social media has become a part of sports whether people like it or not. We will see greater integration of social networking in sports in the very near future. Whether this is a positive move or a negative one we will have to wait and see, but the bottom line is that no one can get rid of social media in the sporting world of today.
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