Sporting Personalities on Twitter

by Andrew Brennan

18:43 on 21/11/08

I’m currently working on a little project for Glasshouse about sport and social media, and one of the things I’m looking at is how famous athletes are using Twitter to engage with their fans.

While sporting news sources often only use Twitter to pump out headlines (@espn, @bbcsport), and some celebrities don’t actually use it themselves (@britneyspears), it’s been interesting to watch some rather famous athletes get involved on Twitter sharing ‘microinsights’ into their daily lives. So far I’ve seen Shaquille O’Neal (@THEREALSHAQ), Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong), Andy Murray (@andy_murray) and Will Carling (@willcarling) twittering away.

Seeing these sporting personalities on Twitter raises a couple issues—

First: Authenticity

How do we know it’s actually the personality and not an impersonator or (worse) his PR person? Apparently Shaquille O’Neill started twittering in response to a fake Shaq. It can be difficult to tell, and sometimes interacting with fake personas can be as fun as interacting with the real thing.

Second: Content

How much can and should sporting personalities share? It’s all well and good for them to talk about the sponsors they’re meeting with or business interests they’re promoting–but is it the sort of thing the public wants to hear about? Do people want to hear Shaq’s stream of consciousness thoughts (which are actually quite entertaining), or do they prefer workout tips? Will advertisers start paying athletes to mention products? Hopefully people will reply and ask for more of what they want and less of what they don’t, and the sporting people will be transparent enough to disclose any paid tweeting.

Third: Longevity

How long will these sporting personalities keep twittering? Will they lose interest and stop, or will they become so popular that they can’t keep up with everyone who wants to interact with them? Barack Obama stopped tweeting on election night (though this seems most likely due to the expiration of a contract). Companies that use Twitter for customer service (@comcastcares, @jetblue) have been able to keep up with all the tweets as their volume has increased. We’ll see what happens when these sporting personalities begin to have tens or hundreds of thousands of followers who all want an acknowledgement or question answered.

For now though, we can enjoy these short bursts of insight into these people and their sports.

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3 Comments

1. Tim Kitchin | 24th November 2008 at 5:13 pm

Ultimately Andrew, does it come down to this: “Be yourself. Unless you’re boring – in which case, do what your sponsors suggest.” ?

2. Andrew Brennan | 1st December 2008 at 11:20 am

I don’t think being yourself and doing what your sponsor suggests have to be mutually exclusive. But I think the public wants insights and the chance to interact personally with athletes and celebs they admire through Twitter–-if what the sponsor suggests is ‘blatantly promote my product,’ followers might turn against the athlete and the sponsor.

3. David Long | 27th January 2009 at 1:34 pm

I’m surprised that so few sports stars have taken to Twitter. We have just published a similar blog listing 20 sports personalities who Twitter. It was actually quite hard to find 20 of them. I think that the opportunity is being missed to connect with their fan base. After all, imagine the potential for a boot manufacturer like Adidas if Beckham was posting regular updates about training sessions and the build up to a match. Connecting brands with audiences in a two way conversation is the inherent benefit of Web 2.0 technologies. It seems to be completely ignored by the mainstream still!

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