Has social media’s impact on the professional sports world been positive or negative?

Social media has made a massive impact on our culture. One of the areas that has not been affected is professional sports. In today’s world, professional sports teams and players from around the world use social media to connect with their global fan bases. Sports teams attempt to build a larger, stronger fan base by engaging fans through social media sites. Additionally, social media sites allow professional athletes to increase their marketability. However, they can also severely damage their career, personal life, and their ‘brand’ if they do not handle their social media interactions with care (Van Schaik). Twitter and Facebook allow teams and …show more content…

I love the inside look into their personal lives. It is very cool when you find out how much you do or do not have in common with them. One of the highlights of my Twitter career was when I tweeted Kevin Love after a Timberwolve’s game and congratulated him on his performance and the team’s win. A few minutes later, I received what is called a “retweet” from Love basically saying thank you. I was blown away. It meant a lot to me to know that Kevin Love took thirty seconds out of his life to tell me, some nobody fan, thank you. It is almost as if social media has taken the place of autographs. Before, you wanted players’ autographs, now you want players to say something back to you on Twitter (Blakley). Social media is a great way for athletes to communicate and engage with fans. It allows players and teams to share information with them before it has been filtered by the news media. Twitter and Facebook have been instrumental in raising the profile of athletes in every sport. It allows them to give a personal perspective on all aspects of the competition, seemingly unhindered by various PR and marketing machines.
While the majority of social media’s impact on professional sports has been positive, there is definitely a negative side that should be discussed. In the early age of social media, some sports leagues had trouble regulating player usage of it. People who grew up long before the Internet age govern