Analysis

           All the data I collected and analyzed from the results of my survey, my interview and my archival research, has helped me to better understand this relationship between sports and social media and has answered the questions that came with this topic. What I came to learn during my research and data collection was some of the reasons social media is such a large part of sports, how sports fans view social media in relation to sports, and what sports more popular in the social media world. I will first analyze some of the archival data I found and point out the key components that will bring this relationship to the surface more.

          Probably the greatest and most insightful piece of data I found was a case study called “Fan and Athlete Interaction and Twitter Tweeting Through the Giro”. This case study was my greatest find of information because it directly targets my exact topic and it shed some light on the interaction between fans and athletes. This study was done by Jeffrey W. Kassing and Jimmy Sanderson from Arizona State University. Here is the link: linkhttp://wspahn.camel.ntcpe.edu.tw/ezcatfiles/t063/download/attdown/0/100B%20%B7_%ADb%20fan%20interaction%20Twitter.pdf. This study was conducted on a major three week cycling Tour of Italy (the Giro) in which athletes such as Lance Armstrong attended. The study focused on the twitter activity between athletes and fans. To give some context about this study, an issue existed with in the this major cycling tour, which was that not all fans could watch the event because some cable and satellite packages did not cover it. These limitations opened the door for twitter to become a source for sporting information. So what these researchers did was catalog the tweets from eight riders, one of which was Lance Armstrong, for the whole event. By the end of the event Armstrong sent 394 tweets, which accounted 53% of all the tweets sent between the eight riders. During the event Armstrong used twitter to promote his cancer initiative, to comment on public affairs, to share results and opinions about other racers and races, and to interact with friends and fans. Armstrong currently has 1,207,445 twitter followers, which is more evidence of Armstrong’s heavy twitter activity. I believe this case study shows that twitter can be much more than just a social interacting site. Armstrong used tweeter to do so much more then just communicate with others. He used it to promote, provide updates on the race, and voice his opinion. How he used twitter shows its versatility and why so many people use it in relation to sports. It allows fans to directly interact with athletes, to get updates, and receive vital information on what’s going on. In this case twitter capitalized off of television’s faults and this shows that fans desire things that television can’t provide, a direct line to the athletes themselves. Social media is becoming the new  bridge between fans and athletes and not only for interaction, but to better understand the athletes themselves and receive vital information that sports fans crave.

          Another important source of archival data that I found, analyzed, and will be using in this project is a site that provided a count of all the twitter followers, facebook fans, and facebook talking of sports teams and organizations. This is important because it gives me an idea of many people worldwide are sports active in social media. Below are graphs I have created using the information from the source I found. The first graph shows the top 10 sports teams and organizations that are followed on social media sites in the U.S. The second graph shows the top 10 worldwide sports teams and organizations that are followed on social media sites.

                         

   

        Now what didn’t surprise me here was that soccer dominated the worldwide results with the FC Barcelona team having 31,847,209 facebook fans and soccer in general have a total of 127,320,738 facebook fans! So this shows that soccer is the undisputed worldwide sports leader in facebook. This was to be expected because soccer is the world’s most popular sport and largest spectator sport. However, it is quite a different story in the U.S. Now before finding this source, my first thought was that the NFL and its teams would be in the lead in the social media spectrum for the U.S. However, this source proved otherwise. The leader is the NBA with 14,317,609 facebook fans and 10,776,424 twitter fans (which is more twitter followers then the facebook worldwide leader, FC Barcelona, which as 9,657,923 twitter followers). So the NBA is the worldwide sports leader of twitter. Interestingly enough, the runner up in the U.S. for top facebook fans is the LA Lakers, an NBA team. The LA Lakers have 13,725,188 facebook fans. ESPN takes second place in twitter race in the U.S. with 4,284,506 followers. Now why the NBA? That is a good question, and I will do my best to answer it. After further research, I think I found a possibility that explains the NBA’s popularity in the social media world. I searched for the biggest NBA stars and legends and found something interesting. It seems that NBA players have the largest sum of facebook fans and twitter followers, more so than the biggest NFL and MLB stars. Lebron James has 10,622,688 facebook fans and 4,770,163 twitter followers http://www.facebook.com/LeBron http://twitter.com/#!/KingJames. Kobe Bryant has 13,032,374 facebook fans  http://www.facebook.com/Kobe. Dwyane Wade has 5,972,482 facebook fans and 3,218,950 twitter fans http://twitter.com/#!/DwyaneWade http://www.facebook.com/dwyanewade. The biggest surprise was Michael Jordan, who has 18,927,374 facebook fans!  http://www.facebook.com/MichaelJordan.These numbers tower over the amount of facebook fans and twitter followers NFL and MLB stars have. The only stars that come remotely close are Chad Ochocinco with 2 million facebook fans and 3.4 million twitter followers http://twitter.com/#!/ochocinco http://www.facebook.com/OchoCinco     and Reggie Bush with 1.9 million facebook fans and 2.4 million twitter followers http://www.facebook.com/ReggieBush http://twitter.com/#!/reggie_bush.

 Why is this? Well it seems, based off my research and observations, that NBA stars are more active and interactive on social media sites. For example, Dwayne Wayne interacts with his fans by posting videos on facebook and Michael Jordan’s wall has 155 thousand likes for his activity. I also notice how much they use twitter because I watch a lot of Sports Center and it always shows how these players are constantly tweeting year around. They tweet their opinions and thoughts all the time and Sports Centers uses these tweets in their show. So my conclusion is that the athletes that more active and interactive in these sites get the most attention. Lance Armstrong is another example, he has so many followers on twitter because of how active he is on the site and of course the fact that he is quite popular in the sports world helped too. What’s interesting is my survey also supports my research that basketball is the more popular sport on social media sites, which is what we’re going to look at now.

          I will now be analyzing the results of the survey I created, which were very interesting. I got a total of 39 respondents. The first part I will be looking at is the responses to the question, Do you ever post on facebook or twitter about sport related topics? The results are below.

               

So this result did not surprise me because I sent this survey to my friends on facebook that are big sports fans. However I did send it to all my friends as well so a fair amount did say they do not really talk about sports on social media sites. So this shows that the majority of social media users do post about sports. Now I also asked them that if they do post about sports, how often do they do so. The answers to this were very much diverse, but the most seemed to be weekly to monthly. Obviously these were diverse because for most of them it depended on which sports were in seasons and what their favorite sports are, which we will look at next. Below are the results for the question, what sports do you follow or post about on facebook and twitter?

   This is the result I was speaking of earlier that supports the research I found about the NBA. Even here, basketball comes out on top in the social media spectrum. This supports my theory that basketball is the number one social media sport in the U.S. because of how involved and interactive the players are on facebook and twitter. Before the research I did, this would have surprised me, but because of the research I did, this result didn’t surprise me at all. This was a really interesting find and supportive of my research. Another part of my survey I would like to note is about the question, do you send tweets or send comments on facebook to shows that use these sites to guide their show such as Sports Center, Audibles, ESPN First Take, NFL32, and Sports Nation? The results were all but three said they do not participate in these. This was to be expected because a small amount of people out of the whole country actually attempt to participate in these shows. However I believe that this fan and sports show interaction is on the rise because it’s a relatively new system and it allows fans to guide the show, which I think is brilliant. In my interview, John supports this through one of his responses which was, "

I think it’s so cool how Sports Nation uses social media to get constant updates from the players, also how they post questions for the fans to answer, so it’s a direct access for the fans to voice their opinions, and if a certain game was what they expected to be or if certain players didn’t live up to their certain potential, Sports Nation gives them a chance to express their feelings about it. just a variety of questions that allow sports fans to voice their reactions to games or any sports topics on television. I think that is a really cool interactive system."This shows that the idea of fans guiding ESPN shows is thought of greatly by sports fans and is used often, but has yet to catch on in a large scale.  It was the same result for question seven which is Do you ever participate in the Sport Center polls that are online and aired on TV? 24 said no and 12 said yes, so again this shows a low amount of participation in the sports shows that use the fan’s view and opinions on the show. Question eight was, do you follow any sport athletes, sport teams, or sport analyst on twitter or are you facebook fans of any? Here are the results:

           

This shows that the majority of people do use social media as a bridge to the sports world. Even most of the people that considered themselves below average said that they do follow athletes, teams, and sports analyst. This means that most of the members on facebook and twitter follow these sports figures even when there not major sports fans. They follow them because of the easy access social media provides to these star figures. The next part of the survey is probably one of the more important parts. The question was, in relation top sports, do you view facebook and twitter as a platform to interaction with others about sports or as a source of information about sports? Both? Neither? Here were the results:

This result shows that the majority sees facebook and twitter’s purpose as a platform for interaction in relation to sports, which would explain the other part of my survey and research that suggested interaction with athletes is a big part of that interaction sports fans crave. This proves my claim that what fans value so much about the relationship between social media and sports is how this connection acts as a bridge that allows fans to interact and learn things about athletes and teams that normal television misses and lacks. And going back to some of my other research, information is another key component to the connection between social media and sports. Armstrong demonstrated how not only can you interact, but can also provide and gain information from social media sites. This is also how many people in the survey felt. Many viewed it as a source of valuable information where they can get instant information and news about sports. Another result I will point out are the answers to the question, do you have a time during the year when you post about sports on twitter or facebook more frequently? The answers all were fairly similar. Many said that playoffs are a time when their sports post would increase. The one answer that came up quite often was of course the Super Bowl. The World Series and NBA Finals also appeared several times. So the general consensus was that sports post occurred more often during post-season games, which makes sense.        

            And finally, I interviewed someone very in tuned and involved with the sports world. He is the student baseball team manager here at the university and he also works for the San Jose Giants organization. He has preferred to keep his name anonymous so we’ll call him John Morgan. John provided some great points about social media that I didn’t realize before and many of his answers supported some of earlier claims. The first response I thought was interesting was his answer to this question, how do you use social media in relation to sports? His answer was, “hmmm…I would say I use facebook primarily, to communicate with my friends about specific sporting events, things that happen throughout the day in the sporting world, and just any other hot topics about sports during that time.” This shows that John also uses social media primary for interaction with others about sports. So this supports the survey in that interaction with others is seen as the primary purpose and use of social media when talking about sports. This next response also supports this conclusion. Do you follow any players on twitter or are you a facebook fan of any players? Do you follow their social media activity? His response was, “uh yes I do, I follow several players…um I cover a few through facebook, they have a facebook page that I'm a fan of and follow, specifically Sergio Romo, Brian Wilson, they update you know whether it’s how they’re doing, how they’re feeling, whether or not they’re gonna be able to play or not for upcoming games, so it kind of gives you an all access look into the lives of these players. It’s just a different, more direct source than the TV.” This response coincides with the case study about Lance Armstrong in that he states exactly what Armstrong did in his three-week cycling event in Italy. He provided updates of how he was doing, feeling about the races, and voicing his opinion on topics. This is exactly what John said he enjoys doing and able to access, he likes being able to interact with the players and get direct updates from the actual individual, instead of hearing it from the TV. This is a great example of how social media acts as a bridge between players and fans. This connection and ability to interact with the actual athletes is what many sports fans crave.  The last important quote I will point out is John’s response to this question, what gratification do you get from using social media as a platform for interaction and information for sports? His answer was, “huh…as far as gratification goes I’d say it just keeps me in the loop for certain things so I don’t like fall behind on some things. It absolutely keeps me updated, you know. It’s like when things reach the TV its already old news, that’s how fast social media is. Social media is like an instant source of information, I use the ESPN app on my facebook and you know, I get a message sent to me ever time something big happens in sports or when scores change in games.” This answer supports my claim that social media not only acts as a platform for interaction but acts also as a source of information. This response shows how sports fans rely on social media for sports information and that it has a big advantage over television, which is that  people can acquire certain pieces of information from social media sites faster than television can air the information. This is why social media sites are starting to become a sought out source of information and news rather than the TV.