This year’s FIFA World Cup Finals feels like an event that doesn’t happen often enough, which is perhaps why it generates such fervid sports enthusiasm every four years, with crowds gathering in over-packed sports bars and proclaiming their support of a favorite team on social media.
Facebook and Twitter dominated the social media landscape this year, creating pages specifically for the event, with features encouraging interactions and allowing for extensive tracking of the games. Facebook released the “Trending World Cup” hub, which appeared at the top of the news feed when users searched related topics. Along with updates from friends regarding the event, the hub featured news, scores, and behind-the-scenes posts from the players. On the #WorldCup page, Twitter added a scoreboard with a list of upcoming matches and featured emoticon flags that automatically appeared after users “hash-flagged” a country code.
Other sports properties need to learn from this experience. Technological advances and the way fans view the game changes greatly in the span of four years, as do the fans themselves. Sports franchises, sports media and sports marketers need to not only keep up, but keep ahead of the game and think hard about the next generations of fans.
Read the rest at Why the Sports Market Must Play the Long Game | Guest Columnists – Advertising Age.
