Opening Night thoughts...

With the Houston Astros' 8-2 victory over the Texas Rangers here on 2013 Major League Baseball Opening Night, I wanted to take a few moments to post about production practices that could help ESPN promote/direct the Twitter chatter in regards to broadcast games. As time progresses, I fully expect ESPN to begin to embrace the social promotional practices of rival sports networks (i.e. FOX Sports, MLB Network, etc.).

An example from the 2012 Postseason of FOX Sports brick and mortar hashtag promotion

While the Twittersphere obviously does not require specific campaigns in order to create social buzz, the incorporation of specific hashtag campaigns helps to direct the conversation to a common digital arena, wherein sports networks are able to more easily engage with an audience that wants to be part of a larger conversation.

WBC Social Growth

With the conclusion of the 2013 World Baseball Classic on March 19th, publications are springing up online touting the outlandish social media statistics that persisted throughout the duration of the tournament. While posting eye-popping numbers in regards to viewership/television ratings internationally, the social media buzz around the event was equally remarkable. Moreover, credit is due to the minds behind the MLB Fan Cave social strategy who anticipated social growth of the event:

February 27th: "As baseball begins its third iteration of the WBC this Sunday, it’s going after its target youth demographic by utilizing tools that were less plentiful – or even nonexistent – during its last tournament four years ago." - (Tom Van Riper, "World Baseball Classic: The MLB Fan Cave Goes Global")

 The Fan Cave put together a contest with the objective of creating social buzz by selecting 16 individuals to watch, blog, and tweet about the event. While there no metrics available to measure the reach of the campaign as a whole, Major League Baseball did publish a press release announcing that the tournament (as a whole) "generated an unheard-of 600 million social media impressions." To put that into perspective, the 2012 World Series generated approximately 10.7 million social media comments - via (Record social media buzz for champion Giants). While the tournament boasts a much more expansive schedule in terms of games played, the near 60-fold advantage in social impressions belonging to the World Baseball Classic will serve as a constant reminder (over the next four years) as to the worldwide reach of the tournament (businesses take note).