All of our habits and behavior have been affected by the growth of social media. No where is that more apparent than with sports viewership. Clearly, this has major implications for advertisers.
According to Nielsen:
“In the last 10 years, the available hours of sports programming has increased by 232 percent, according to Nielsen’s 2013 Year in Sports Media Report. Not only are there more sports-focused channels available to viewers, nonsports networks have also added sports content to their lineups. And with more sports programming out there tugging at viewers’ heartstrings, Americans clocked 33 billion hours watching sports on TV in 2013. What’s more, viewing sports is an opportunity to be social, whether watching with pals in the stadium or alone online, fans need to gab about it. Even though sports events only accounted for 1.2 percent of all TV programming, conversations about sports made up nearly half of all Tweets about TV (49.7%).”
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In more recent years, I believe that the sports programming audience has become more equally divided among men and women, which may account for more viewing and content on nonsports networks. With today’s technology as well, there are more ways to view sports content. I would have guessed that there would be more time spent on smartphones than computers, but I would expect that to change in the future.
I am a big sports fan and the first thing I do when I get home is turn on sport center. Recently with the production of sports apps I have installed a few and check them to look up current sports news and sometimes I will go on team websites as well. I can definitely see a bigger jump in people viewing sports on a smartphone.
I’m always watching sports on TV and I’m always checking my sports apps, whether it be, ESPN score center, fantasy football, or bleacher report. With the increase in technology, more and more people are becoming sports fans and have easier access to games and scores. I even sat behind this kid last year who watched a soccer game on his laptop everyday (during class).
I feel like the increase in the technology as of late also helps. Most people can’t leave their home without their phone or laptop and that gives them the ability to check the games and watch them. Sports have always been a big part of my life, and I feel like more women are starting to be interested in sports. That also helps boost the rating on social media. A
People enjoy watching sports TV for many reasons. As you stated it’s a way to entertain yourself as well as hang out with a group of people. It gives people something to talk about and everyone no matter who you are knows something about sports. In addition to channels that show actual games, many channels add the element of sports by making the character engage in athletics. Whether it’s a character joining a sports team or a SVU case about an athlete who was killed; sports are everywhere in todays day and age.
While I am a fan of the increasing amount of ways that I am able to watch the knicks, from a marketing standpoint sports marketing has really taken off. The audience that watches sports is more gender equal than it used to be, and the accessibility of watching a sport is now as easy as opening your phone. It seems that the marketing value of the sports industry will be benefiting from this increase.
To be honest, these statistics don’t surprise me at all. As Americans living in the 21st Century, is it certainly obvious that we constantly have our faces attached to our phones, tablets, etc. What makes sports great is that it brings people together, and seeing various sports organizations taking advantage of social media, as well as creating partnerships with non-sports television networks, is absolutely terrific. The sports industry is certainly one of the leading ones when it comes to effective marketing.
I thoroughly believe the statistic stating that even though sports only accounts for 1.2 percent of TV programming, the conversation about sports makes up almost half of all TV related tweets. Based on personal experience, there have been times where I am tempted to unfollow certain people who tweet about every single play occurring in a certain sporting event. When there is a nationally important game in whatever sport going on; forget it, I want to delete my twitter all together. I think the reason the majority of television related tweets go to sports is because there are so many different sports that each have so many different teams. That means there are many more opportunities, (several sports per day, several teams per day), about which to tweet, whereas when it comes to other television programs some are only shown once a day, but mostly on a weekly basis.
I found this post really interesting. Sports has become a crazy part of our every day lives. There is constant sports coverage on TV and there are mobile apps that you can download to know what is going on if you are not around a TV. With the rapid advancement in smartphone and tablet technology it is becoming easier and easier for sports fans to get information without having to be around a TV. I use the MLB app to get scores and updates about every game that goes on in baseball and when football season comes around I use an NFL app for the same reason. It is convenient, free, and more and more people will continue this trend of mobile sports coverage.