How the New Media are Used In Sports

Introduction


Since the beginning of time, man has been known to participate in a variety of sports. The idea of sports goes back centuries to the practice of hunting. Tribesmen created weapons with the resources around them and forged groups that would be the most successful at catching prey. Weapons often included bows and arrows, as well as spears. When facing large animals, such as bulls or lions, tribesmen were compelled to work in teams and create synergy in order to avoid casualties.

Since then, new sports have appeared and have developed into much more sophisticated versions of their former selves. The purpose of playing sports has also changed--rather than a necessity, sports have become a method of entertainment and competition. Along with these developments came the sports fans. Cheered on by a roaring crowd, athletes have become more and more interested in pleasing their viewers and ultimately, their sponsors. Media companies and executives have also become more and more interested in pleasing fans. High-definition televisions, portable devices, fan-pages, and social networking sites became the new media for people to receive sports coverage and updates when are unable to physically appear at the event.

Sports Websites


Entertainment Sports Programming Network, or ESPN, was founded to cover sports-related programs. It covers all major sports, and primarily specializes in sports news, updates, analysis of upcoming matchups. In the mornings, their Sportscenter program covers sports highlights from the previous day, as well as analysis and any breaking news regarding injuries or trades. It is an extremely condensed and informative update, which make sit very attractive for many sports fans to tune in the morning as well as throughout the day. They repeat their report on team updates every hour on the hour, and also give live look-ins to any ongoing news conferences given by head coaches of teams, or superstars.

As for specific sports leagues, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association , and the National Hockey Association , they have their own websites with video highlights, interviews, and news. These all help sports fans better follow their teams and their respective sports. These websites also include team specific apparel websites, which makes it easy for fans to find printed apparel to support their teams.

Fantasy Football
As a subset to sports websites, there is now what is called ‘fantasy sports’. In Fantasy sports, a ‘commissioner’ of a league recruits ‘team owners’, who then draft real players to form their own ‘fantasy team’, and they score points and compete with other fantasy team owners. These leagues have different scoring formats and scoring uses the stats that the players rack up in the real games during the regular season. This makes watching the regular season games even more entertaining, and fantasy sports has expanded primarily to include basketball, football, and baseball. Participating in fantasy sports gives an extra stake to regular season games which do not usually have that high of a significance. It is common for sports fan to own multiple fantasy teams over the course of the same season. Playing fantasy sports has become common place in workplaces with friendly wagers. Both ESPN and Yahoo! have their own fantasy sports websites.

Television and Sports
Superbowl weekend is here! Millions of people worldwide get together and invite friends over to their place in order to watch and cheer for their favorite teams. The television set has been one of the most common and oldest mediums for which people receive their sports entertainment outside of the playing field. From satellite users to cable users, from casual viewers to die-hard fans, the television has been the most reliable way to watch sports from home, that is unless you forgot to pay the cable bill.

Baseball, football, soccer and basketball are all prominent channels for companies to reach out to their target audiences, but football definitely holds the crown in that discussion. Due to the games being played only once a week, football games are highly awaited for for those who follow the sport. In the current 2013-2014 season, a 30-second spot costs on average $593,700 in upfront negotiations. .

Advertisements and Sports
Since much of the advertisements on channels such as ESPN are geared towards young men to middle aged men, they are very gender specific. The Coors brewing company is very prominent, and they sponsor many of the NBA highlights and their product is always advertised on and off throughout the day. Adidas and Nike also buy some of ESPN's advertisement segments, and they advertise not only their products, but the athletes that they sponsor. Kobe, Durant, and LeBron are all NIKE athletes and they all have their own shoe lines that NIKE markets to basketball players of all ages. Gillete also has recognized that their target for their products is the same audience that watches ESPN - young to middle-aged males, and they constantly advertise their patented razors.  More and more often, there are commercial breaks 'built-in' to game times, and there are always commercial time-outs throughout the game, whether it be a football or basketball game. It allows networks that are broadcasting the games to have guaranteed advertising segments that they can auction off to big corporations. The Superbowl has prominently been known for the great half-time performance as well as the advertisements on television. According to Jeff Stone, "CBS charged between $3.8 million and $4 million for every such spot" of advertisement during the game. . Considered as one of America's most watched television broadcast every year, the Superbowl has become a breeding ground for major companies to advertise "high-profile television commercials".



Smartphones and Sports


With the advent of smartphones and data plans, the sports world realized that they could capitalize on this new market by further distributing their product. ESPN has one of the more popular free applications, available on iOS, and Android, which allows users to keep up with games with live updated scores and play-by-play commentary. It also helps sports fans by providing team news and updates. These live streaming applications ultimately help fans stay connected to the games if they are unable to watch it.

Recently, the NBA and NFL have released respective paid apps that stream live games over an internet connection. These new apps may be a little costly, but they are absolutely essential to those diehard fans who want to be able to support their team when they are not near a TV. Available on iPads and smartphones, users can watch live sports anywhere, anytime.

In addition, ESPN and Yahoo! have released mobile versions of their fantasy sports web pages, which allows fantasy owners to update their lineups and make trades while they are on the go.

Social Media and Sports
Twitter has also taken some role in the sports world, with athletes, and beat writers and analysts all "tweeting" live updates, breaking news, as well as musings and the latest.

Many teams have official twitter feeds, advertising combination ticket deals, as well as promoting upcoming games. These team twitters are highly valuable because they also can give notice for delays of games, and also other important information, i.e. what color to wear to support the home team.

Athletes that have taken to Twitter have done so to connect with fans on a more intimate level. Fans get to see firsthand pictures that athletes post, and can have a look-in on lives of athletes. Some of the more prominent superstars, like Shaq or LeBron, have held contests on Twitter for last-minute tickets to see their games.

Also, athletes are starting to use Instagram to document their daily lives for fans to see. Kobe, in particular, has been using Twitter as well as Instagram to document his injury recovery from a torn Achilles tendon.

The media personnel that use Twitter use it to give commentary on ongoing games, or analysis of past games and upcoming games. This analysis also helps fantasy sports players to advise them on which players to pick up or which players to drop.

ESPN also has a Facebook page where they post highlights and opinions, and it always garners a lot of attention regarding rivalries and exciting matchups. ESPN also has a host of analysts present at every game, and on Sportscenter programs, and these analysts are mostly coaches, former players, and color commentaries and they all have personal twitter accounts that they post game analysis on. On ESPN’s NBA page, they even have a twitter feed that streams all the latest tweets from their NBA Analysts.