Social Media in the Sports Industry

Social media is continuing to grow and spread across many different industries and platforms. One of the industries that I have seen this the most is the sports industry. You see more and more teams hiring people, mainly from the younger generation, to run their social media accounts. This allows the teams and players to get more exposure because they are up to date on the latest social media trends.

In order to dive deeper into how social media is affecting the sports industry, I made a podcast where I interviewed my friend, Quinton Fesq, who works full time for Empire Sports Media, which is a company in New York that covers New York sports teams. He is a video editor for their podcast as well as their TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and X accounts.

You can find the full podcast here.


My first question for Quinton was what impact he has seen social media have on the sports industry from what he has experienced in his job so far. One impact he has seen that he thinks will continue to grow is the number of independent reporters. Because anyone has the ability to post on social media and become popular by continuing to post, he thinks that more and more people will get into the sports industry to create content. Something that he has been continuing to see since he started working for Empire Sports Media is that companies in the sports industry, including huge companies like ESPN, are starting to hire people who run popular accounts and have made a name for themselves through social media. Some people may think that in order to work for a big company like ESPN you have to a degree or years of experience, but if you are passionate about social media and post consistently, you are opening up many opportunities for yourself to work in social media.

The next question I asked Quinton was what he had to say about social media having a bad reputation, and what he would say to people who think it is a bad thing. While he had to agree that social media can be bad, he stated that his message would be to ignore the hate and ignore other people's opinions, because they don't matter at the end of the day. However, he explained that social media is having a bad effect on people because some people are getting too comfortable saying whatever they want because they can just hide behind a screen. This is causing people to start saying these types of things in public. This just recently happened in the NFL, where New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones was heckled by a fan after they lost their first game of the season. Fans waited by the players' exit after the game just to heckle him and yell insults at him. Quinton's boss and the founder of Empire Sports Media, Alex Wilson, posted about the incident on X, agreeing that this type of treatment isn't right. You should never treat anyone like this because you don't know what else is going on in their lives.

Overall, social media can be a bad thing if used incorrectly, but you just have to ignore certain things you see on social media because they are most likely lies or fake. However, social media provides everyone who chooses to use it with many opportunities. Social media is continuing to evolve and grow, and the industries that choose to stay up to date with those changes will evolve and grow as well.

Comments

  1. Indistinct ChatterSeptember 11, 2024 at 9:19 PM

    Great job on this episode! The conversation was really insightful, especially in highlighting how social media has opened up opportunities in the sports industry for content creators and independent reporters. It's interesting to hear about the shift in hiring practices, with companies like ESPN valuing popular social media personalities, regardless of formal education or traditional experience. I also appreciated Quinton's balanced take on the negative side of social media, his point about ignoring the hate while recognizing the harmful effects of anonymity was dope!

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