I originally tweeted about this story, expecting to throw it up on our weekly Shabbat Shalom: Friday Wrap-Up column. But then I realized that the post titled Sports and Social Media: Where Opportunity and Fear Collide, deserved to be discussed instead of merely linked. Particularly, this part of the first paragraph caught my attention:
the bottom line is that control of the message is slipping away with Twitter as a medium. It’s this fear of losing control that is driving organizations to restrict what gets said in a social media space.
Perhaps, for sports agents, this is far from the truth. Finally, agents can control the message instead of have mainstream media potentially distort it before it reaches the masses. Unfortunately, if an agent has no control over his client, then the agent may not lose control to ESPN, Fox Sports, or Yahoo!, but to the client, who can reduce his value by saying the wrong thing on a site like Twitter or Facebook. How many agencies restrict their clients (or at least strongly deter their clients) from using social media services because of this fear? I do not have any stats, but it would be interesting to find out.
Additionally, agents can still gain by pitching their information to select mainstream media sources. Instead of having that information published in tomorrow’s paper, it will probably be tweeted by a writer for one of the large entities. Creating a relationship with major writers will do your clients good when/if they run into problems and need some help from those with large readerships.
Leagues, teams, conferences, and other game organizers may continue to try to restrain open discussion by fans, athletes, and others surrounding professional and collegiate games. The restrictive policies infuriate those who pay the money that allows the sports to survive. Many athletes understand that being on Twitter and Facebook is an intelligent business move. Agents need to do the same. Various leagues, teams, conferences, etc. will eventually wake up as well.
