There is no industry that is untouched by the influence of the internet and digital penetration. Over the years, even the sports industry has been revolutionized by the rise of social media. It has proven to be one of the powerful tools in building a community of sports lovers and connecting them through a prompt medium of communication with real-time updates.
Social media has become an interactive platform for players, teams, and fans, henceforth building a cult and contributing to the rise of popularity.
With Instagram leveraging reels and videos of the best moments of sports to Twitter providing information with trending hashtags, social media has ingrained sports into the daily lives of people. Any information, updates, audio/visual sports content, updates about favorite players, and team information can be accessed in just one click. From live-tweeting, sharing memes, and applauding their favorite sportsperson through the medium of the internet, the audience is not just watching the sports but presenting and sharing their views and feelings through social media platforms. Today even the athletes and franchises have their separate accounts sharing information and updates about their lives, updates about the team, and the best moments of the game with their fans.
Sports events and social media today walk hand-in-hand. The good-performing and popular sportsperson’s popularity today is not restricted to just the field but has grown leaps and bounds through paid social media posts, paid lives, and stories. Social media popularity and following have become contributing factors to the commercial value of sportspersons today.
Sportspeople like Virat Kohli, M.S Dhoni, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Roger Federer have a huge fan following spread across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram handles. Whereas the franchise individually has a humongous following itself, Real Madrid with 126 million, FC Barcelona with 112 million, and Manchester United with 61.1 followers on Instagram.
What Are The Various Contributing Factors To The Popularity Of The Sports Industry?
1. Dedicated Social Media News Outlets
Not just social media platforms, the rising popularity of sports, and the acceleration of sports information news exchange are to be credited to the dedicated social media news outlets. The news outlets solely dedicated to sports news like Sportstar, ESPN, etc., or active sports sections of news media platforms have led to the mass exchange of sports information.
2. Digital And Social Media Marketing
Dedicated sports fans are the target audience of the content creation on the social media feed of sportspersons, franchises, and social media news outlets. Hence, this creates opportunities to employ advanced tools of digital marketing and social media marketing to target the audience and engage with them. The tools are also deployed to build one-to-one relationships and feed onto their interest and instill a sense of loyalty to the franchise and players through the art of storytelling propagated through social media platforms.
3. Popularity Online
On one hand, the rise in popularity can be measured by the rising popularity of sports in the gaming world. Many games are solely conceptualized and played by people of age groups. The games have names of real players and are rated accordingly. On the other hand, popular platforms like SBO are there to help sports bettors to choose the best sports betting site, and thorough research on their part ensures that the users get the very best sports betting platforms. With the humongous popularity of sports, it has become necessary for players to invest hours into researching what different betting platforms have to offer and recommend the best ones to suit their needs by covering every sport out there, and this is where SBO shines.
Change In Future Paradigms Of Sports
Just like the gradual increase in the popularity of sports through social media platforms, a perpetual state of rising is expected in the sports industry through social media and digital presence in the coming years. Slowly, gaming podcasts, Clubhouses, and sports betting are gaining popularity among the audience.
Further, the constant changes in technologies have the potential to open horizons that will contribute to the popularity of the sports fraternity across the globe. Sports industries and sports-based media outlets are also judiciously exploiting immense opportunities through various tools of digital marketing and social media marketing. There are also technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence that will further increase in the coming years and will prove advantageous in more ways than one.
