Who is the king of sports when it comes to social media?  You might think the answer is easy, by going to each sport's twitter link and seeing their followers….but is that really the correct answer? 

On March 1st, I tweeted: 

"Interesting: @MLB has 900k followers… @nfl has 1.5M …@NBA 1.8M….@MLB will have more than @nfl at end of year I predict."

MLB responded back to my tweet by direct message and said something that put something in a bigger perspective for me. 

"Total MLB ecosystem matters more. 200+ MLB Tweeps, nearly 5 million total followers for MLB on Twitter. http://bit.ly/bF3g54 a sample"

"but thanks for getting the word on @mlb out there! have a great spring training"

I think MLB really needs some social media players to really engage more with their fans. OchoCinco might not have the most followers (770k+) in the Twitterverse but he does a really good job engaging his fans.  Shaquille O'Neal (who I admired as a kid) has over 2.8+ million followers.  This is a HUGE number in the Twitterverse for a personal account and for the NBA ecosystem.  What is so special about Shaq? Personally, I think it's his personality and how he engages with his fans, which is key (but who will know the answer – maybe Shaq will tell me someday). MLB which I am a big fan of, really needs a Shaq/OchoCinco player to step up to the plate.  Who would be a good person in the MLB that would embrace social media the best?

All athletes/artists/actors etc need to REALLY READ this twice: 
Fans want to interact with you.  If a fan goes to your twitter page and they see no @replies to any of your followers, that's wack! You are not fooling anyone, we know you use your account for self promotion.  Nobody cares all the time about YOU, fans want to ask you questions.  The feeling of being responded to by your favorite athlete/actor/artist etc makes the fan feel special. That information will spread faster to other fans that are not even necessary fans of that person. Hmm now I think I figured out why Shaq has so many followers.

Fans want to share clips from their favorite game or when an awesome play is seen.  Problem with this is, when fans upload a clipped version of this awesome play to YouTube, the copyright rules for sports clips is so ridiculous, it's usually taken down within 24-48 hours.  

I know from experience, I posted a YouTube video I created, which was a tribute to the Colorado Rockies making it to the World Series in 2007.  The video quickly got to 15,000 views and then I got a message saying the video was removed due to copyright claims by the MLB.  There is two ways of looking at this: 1) Fans want to post this media online and it's inevitable 2) MLB doesn't make any money on this video and they own copyright so instead of YouTube making money on their material, they send DMCA complaints. 

Solution: Why don't MLB, NFL, NBA get together and make a Vevo like platform together, with agreement with YouTube and everyone wins?  This platform should have the ability of clipping a previous game so users can share via the platform.  Facebook integration, YouTube partnership, each sport is making money, problem solved?

I thought the music industry was strict on removing copyrighted content, but sports are very strict.  NBA gets a facebook thumbs up because they actually have their own YouTube page of the daily highlights which is great to share in social media.

How do you get your alerts to your favorite sports games? I enjoy using the iphone app Sportacular which I can set alert options on my favorite teams (definitely worth checking out).  When I'm at home I like to rely on twitter following ESPN, MLB, NFL, NBA.  Now sports teams are actually embracing social media more but I still feel like there is a big barrier still to cross.  

Please help Retweet this on Twitter Thanks for reading.