Twitter and Professional Sports
August 5, 2009 in Crazy Stories In Sports, Football
Being from San Diego, I follow San Diego sports pretty closely. One story that is making headlines through sports is Antonio Cromartie’s $2,500 fine for knocking the food at the Charger park during training camp. Via Twitter.
This story seems funny to me. I know many professional athletes are using twitter and facebook to create a fan base, because having fans sell tickets, and selling tickets gets players paid. But teams are not quite liking the fact that players are putting butts in the seats. Chargers have actually banned tweeting from within the locker. Shawn Merriman (@shawnmerriman) posted that he found a loop hole in the agreement and he is outside the locker room.
This story has even made it to ESPN. Bill Williamson said that players need to be careful-Big brother is watching.
I really don’t understand why send a tweet is such a big deal. I understand that the teams want to maintain some form of control within their compounds, but Merriman has 40,000+ followers on twitter. Than fan base sells jerseys, tickets, and other items and keeps the organization running. To restrict it is to restrict the money flow. I understand that sports is not all about money, but if there were no fans, there would be no sports. If I owned a sport team, I would recommend my players, especially high profile ones, to get onto social networking sites and start chatting. It creates a feel of “knowing” a pro player. It puts butts in the seat and money into the organization. Fining a player for tweeting is crazy!