Sports-Business During COVID-19: How Sports Social Media Teams Stay Relevant Without Sports
By Toby Srebnik for LVSportsBiz.com
People often make lemonade from lemons in the toughest of situations.
Now imagine working in social media for a sports franchise when suddenly the two things you generate the most content from, league games and team practices, are suspended indefinitely.
What do you do? Do you go dark, or do you find ways to continue shining light to your followers in this ever-evolving situation we are all dealing with at some level?
I (@fsutoby) recently posed this question to my co-host Jarret Streiner (@jarret23) on our Sports and Social Media Podcast, and we both agreed teams would have to get creative and find ways to take people’s minds off of the stoppages, whether it was through replays of classic games or other ways not yet previously done.
Fortunately, I am encouraged by what I have seen over the last 10 days, as Social Media teams have hit the challenge head on and are going places I’m not sure even I expected them to go.
For starters, from a local perspective, the Vegas @GoldenKnights have highlighted old games through #VGKReplay airing on AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain West and are tweeting during them as if the games are going on in real-time. Despite the game being from 2018, fans were definitely happy to see the content because 327 people liked the first tweet. Teams creating opportunities helps foster a sense of community, and the Golden Knights have done that here.
Meanwhile, the Las Vegas @Raiders have also showcased classic playoff games on YouTube during this present time when no sports are taking place. In addition, they showed fans they care about their well-being by simply tweeting out a message for Raider Nation to Stay Safe with a full graphic of how to properly wash your hands with soap and water. Many teams never deviate from typical content, so it is great to see the Raiders making COVID-19 related content available on Twitter without a second thought.
The University of Nevada at Las Vegas wanted to demonstrate that despite the cancellation of all spring sports, their athletic staff is still meeting remotely. In a recent tweet on @UNLVAthletics, the account showed a screenshot from a video conference call with 100 staff members – a powerful visual for sure!
The Las Vegas Aviators were just a few weeks from a new season beginning when minor league baseball was put on indefinite hold. Undeterred, @AviatorsLV went in a different direction by realizing many children in Clark County and across the country have had school cancelled and are looking for things to do while home.
The Aviators tweeted out a coloring page fans could print out and then asked fans to tag them when they were done. Parents love when their kids can be part of a shared sports experience.
Outside of Las Vegas, I have found several examples showcasing the creativity and cleverness that is starting to become more of the norm than the exception.
The New Jersey Devils’ mascot NJ Devil took conference calling to a new level with a recent tweet on his @NJDevil00 account where he explains he is working from home.
He then included a photo showing he is in fact on a conference call with Louie from the St. Louis Blues, Stanley C. Panther from the Florida Panthers, and two other NHL mascots. When you factor in mascots don’t speak but gesture, you can imagine what, if anything, was discussed (or not discussed)! Either way, very clever.
The Phoenix Suns hardly wasted a single second, because two days after the NBA shut down for the foreseeable future, the @Suns account announced they would be playing the rest of their season on Twitch. What I found fascinating was Phoenix lost to Dallas in their first simulation and yet, fans were just happy to have something to cheer (and boo) about.
The 2019 World Series Champion Washington Nationals are among the best overall social media teams in sports right now. One reason is because, despite baseball’s stoppage, the @Nationals have so much content from last season to repackage in multiple ways.
On one recent occasion, they filmed a short video of multiple players including Juan Soto and Stephen Strasburg reading “mean tweets” that were sent to the Nationals account during the 2019 Wild Card Game. In that game, Washington trailed 3-0 after 2 innings and 3-1 after 7 but scored 3 in the 8th and won 4-3. The video is epic!
One more team whose creativity always shines brightly is the Florida State League’s Daytona Tortugas. Much like the Aviators, their season has yet to start in 2020, but the @DaytonaTortugas original content continues. Through their initiative and cooperation with other teams in the league, the Tortugas staged a Tic-Tac-Toe Tournament in bracket form (and who doesn’t love brackets in March?) and played it out over several days. What I liked most about it is even when they didn’t make the finals themselves, they still gave it the all-star treatment.
As we wait for sports to start again hopefully at some point in 2020, at least the teams both in Las Vega and around the country have discovered ways to continue to engage their captive audiences. My hope is more teams will do this in the future even when the actual games return.
Toby Srebnik is manager of public relations and communications for Truly Nolen Pest Control and has been with the company since 2015. He has spent 19 years in the Public Relations industry as well as 12 years in the Social Media industry and is the only person who is both a past president of the Public Relations Society of America’s Greater Fort Lauderdale and Greater Palm Beach Chapters. In 2019, Srebnik was honored with PRSA Greater Fort Lauderdale’s Wizard PR Award for Communicator of the Year. To contact Srebnik, you can find him on Twitter (@fsutoby) or email him at fsutoby@gmail.com. Srebnik can also be heard on the all-new Pitch to the Rhino Podcast with co-founders Jose Boza & Jarret Streiner: Episode 4 discussing “The Aftermath” is now available on Apple (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-pitch-to-the-rhino-podcast/id1499429062), Spotify, Stitcher, and Podbean.
