Social Media In Sports

This podcast discusses the impact of social media on sports, focusing on women's basketball and the US Women's National Soccer Team. Social media has brought more coverage and attention to women's sports, leading to increased fan engagement and sales. It has also allowed fans to interact with each other and with athletes. However, there are drawbacks to social media, such as censorship and backlash against athletes expressing their personal views. Overall, social media has had both positive and negative effects on sports. Hi, welcome to Game Talk, the podcast about the effects of social media in sports. I'm Kyla Wilkinson and in this podcast we're going to talk about the pros, cons, current events, and overall impact of social media on sports. Social media has impacted the world tremendously and it leaves us wondering if it's for the better or worse. Sports would not be as popular as they are today without social media. And that's just a fact. For example, something that's taken a big leap is women's basketball. This year's Women's March Madness Tournament got more coverage than any other women's tournament in the past. Even when UConn's women's team went back to back to back to back in years 2013, 14, 15, and 16, no one really paid attention to that. It is incredibly hard to win four national championships in a row and for that no one condemned them, gave them credit, or coverage. Nowadays we have players like Angel Reese, Kaitlyn Clark, Paige Beckers that have made the game coverage more enhanced. The final game, the championship game, between South Carolina and Iowa this year became the most watched basketball game in history with a peak of 18.2 million people. 18.2 million, wow, and people say women's basketball isn't entertaining. Moving on, things called TikTok edits of these players were created by fans. The edits consist of videos found across the internet in order to make these players look good. And if you think it had something to do with what you interact with and why it's on your For You page, you're wrong. Kind of. You see, I've asked a lot of my non-basketball-watching friends if they've seen TikTok edits of basketball players. Instantly, one of my friends said, are you talking about the Paige Beckers edits on TikToks? Without me even saying anything about gender or names, she knew exactly what I was talking about. Being a volleyball player who only watches college volleyball, she admitted to watching a couple women's March Madness games and even creating a bracket for it this year. The more edits that were made, the more people they reached, regardless of if they are fans of basketball or have never watched the sport in their life. TikTok brought awareness to the sport, and thanks to social media, a lot of women in sports have gotten a lot of coverage. Another example of this is the USWNT, otherwise known as the United States Women's National Team for Soccer. This article talks about the US Women's Soccer team and how social media helped them fight for their case of equal pay. The US Women's National Soccer team has won four world championships in the span of it being created. Our men's team has won a big fat zero. And somehow, the men's team has still paid more money than the women's team. Funny how that works, right? The lack of coverage and equal pay in women's sports is just terrible. And this quote is talking about women's sports and how much they have benefited from social media. Their coverage, fan engagement, and sales have only gone up since they have been actively posting on these accounts. The rise of new media, which has enabled an avenue for greater media participation for passionate sports fans, combined with the relationship emerging between Twitter and television, indicates that sports teams may benefit greatly from using social media. This quote is basically just saying that the more and more they post on social media, the more and more coverage that these teams are going to get, and the more fans that they are going to get. To start things off, the USWNT's team's opening games received 5.26 million views, which is 99% more than their opening games last year. And when fans were asked about why they watched these games unlike last year, they mentioned seeing their schedule posted on sports accounts like ESPN and Overtime. Both of these accounts have well over 10 million followers, and in the last couple years of me following them, I've only really seen the men's side of sports. Occasionally I'd see something about a woman playing sport and doing well and excelling in it, but the comments under them 9 times out of 10 were just men bashing on these women. As a female athlete, that is probably the most frustrating thing about being a female athlete. Growing up, I felt like I never had anyone to look up to because these players weren't getting the coverage they deserved. Now it's amazing to see all the little girls and boys impacted by these women because they are finally getting the coverage they deserve. Transitioning to more pros of social media and sports, fan interaction. This is probably the biggest pro of having social media and sports. From the article Social Media Hooks Sports Events, A Systematic Review of Engagement, the article states, In the sports sector, social media plays an important role. They enable sports fans to communicate easily with each other. Social media makes it easier to find people who are just like you or people who aren't like you at all. Another source states, The growth of social media has facilitated for sports fans accessing information about their idols, which is viewed positively in increasing interpersonal relationships with idols as well as supporting sports teams. For this reason, social media is a means of interaction between fans, idols, and sports teams. What this quote is saying is social media allows for fans to easily have access to each other. Like I was saying, we are able to communicate with people who are like and unlike us. Personally there is nothing better than being surrounded and talking to people who like the same team as you and also bashing on people who don't like the same team as you. It just feels like a community of people who love you just because you like the same team as them. And that feels amazing. It's crazy that that can bring a million people together regardless of what their race, social status, gender, or anything. Social media is so powerful and we need to combine that with something like athletics and pro sports that are streamed throughout the nation and world sometimes. And more and more people hear about these things. It becomes bigger than just sports. Now it's time for some current events, and this is my favorite part of the podcast. The latest WNBA draft class was the most popular class since the WNBA started. The first pick was no other than Kaitlyn Clark, and she has been the face of women's basketball for 4 years now, and will continue being the face. It's no secret that she's gotten a lot of hate from people who are actually in the WNBA as well, but people who are not in it either. There's TikTok videos of people going around asking young men if they think they would beat Kaitlyn Clark in a 1v1 match. And 9 times out of 10 these men are saying, yeah they can, which makes no sense. I mean how can a regular schmegular joe be a D1 basketball player who has been training her whole life and is being drafted into the WNBA. It makes absolutely no sense. But anyway, Clark averaged 28.4 points, 7.1 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and had a 46.2 percentage from the 3. I mean anything above a 30% from the 3 point line is absolutely insane for stats. The one in Illinois that everyone is most excited about is Camila Cardoso, who was picked 3rd by the Chicago Sky. Cardoso and Clark actually went up against each other in the championship game, and Cardoso came out with the win. Now we picked up Cardoso, and she averaged 10 points, 6 points, 7.9 rebounds, 1.2 assists, and was 57.5% from the field. She's also a 6'7 maniac who can't be stopped in the paint. We also snagged Angela Reese, who averaged 18.6 points, 12.3 rebounds, 1.9 assists, and 49.8% from the field. It's crazy to see all three of these people, who are big names in women's basketball, on these teams, and it's going to be fun to see them play against each other again. It's going to be fun to see Angela Reese and Kaitlyn Clark compete more, especially what happened with the 2023 season, and 2024 actually too. In 2023, Angela Reese and the LSU Tigers took down Kaitlyn Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes in the national championship by well over 20 points. And then back in 2024, this year's March Madness tournament, Iowa took on LSU in the final four round, and ended up beating them to go back-to-back to the national championship. There were so many players in this draft that stuck out, but obviously out of Chicago, Angela Reese and Camila Cardozo are my personal favorites. The next couple of draft classes in women's basketball are going to keep getting better and better. We have players like Paige Beckers, Aidy Fudd, Juju Watkins, Flau'jae Johnson, and Haley VanLift that are coming up in the next couple of draft classes. Women's basketball is only going to get more and more popular. Now social media isn't always sunshine and rainbows, there are a lot of flaws to it. One main one is censorship, meaning athletes are not allowed to use their first amendment right and have free speech. Part of me wants to say this is good and athletes are role models, they have to be leaders for kids. And the other part of me feels bad for these athletes, especially the ones that get hated on for their own personal views. I feel like especially with people that have more conservative views, there's more of a stigma online. I've seen through TikTok, Instagram, and a bunch of different other social media platforms, different athletes that get in trouble for supporting things like pro-life, anti-vaxx, and having guns in America. And although I personally don't agree with any of those things, I can respect them for having their own opinion. We also have athletes that get in trouble for things they say online. One specific athlete that comes to mind is Kyrie Irving. At the time, Irving was a basketball player for the Brooklyn Nets. There was a documentary going around that had a lot of anti-semitic remarks, which means just basically hating on Jewish people. Kyrie posted the documentary's post on Instagram in order to support his people. The documentary was made by an African American director. Kyrie then got hated for the remarks that were made in the documentary and for reposting it in support of it. This makes me wonder if any regular person said this, would they get as much hate? And my answer is no. As terrible as it sounds because no one should have the ability to say anything about any culture or race or anything like that negatively, someone who doesn't have as big of a platform as Kyrie Irving probably could get away with saying what he said. And worse, I've seen people still get support online after they've said the n-word and it's very clear that they aren't African American or anything like that. I've also seen people being extremely homophobic online with no remorse or care for what they're saying. The head coach of the Brooklyn Nets said in an article, We were dismayed today when given the opportunity in a media session that Kyrie refused to say that he has no anti-semitic beliefs nor acknowledged specific hateful material in the film. This was not the first time he had the opportunity but failed to clarify. While that statement makes Kyrie seem like he had absolutely no remorse for what he did, he later then in the article made a statement saying, To all Jewish families and communities that are hurt and affected by my post, I am deeply sorry to have caused you pain and I apologize. I initially reacted out of emotion to being unjustly labeled anti-semitic instead of focusing on the healing process of my Jewish brothers and sisters that were hurt from the hateful remarks made in the documentary. In these instances, it's hard to say who is right and who is wrong. Obviously it's never okay to support something that makes hateful comments to a specific culture, race, gender, or anyone. But the difference in this is Kyrie was trying to support a different minority group, the African American community. Because of this, Kyrie lost his brand deal with Nike that enabled him to make more and more money. Kyrie Irving had a shoe brand deal with Nike and would come out with a shoe every year that a lot of people would buy. It's devastating to see that happen to someone because of the lack of freedom that they have. This makes me think of Colin Kaepernick as well. Kaepernick decided that he didn't want to stand for the flag during the national anthem at a football game because of the racial injustices that were going on in America. At the time, Trayvon Martin had just been shot by a police officer for having a toy gun in his hand and a bag of Skittles. The police unjustly, racially profiled him and decided to act upon actions before going over and speaking to him about what is going on, what he's doing, and where he's going. One article bashed on Colin Kaepernick and called him a non-American for supporting the flag, even though he was born here. Again, he was just using his Second Amendment right in order to bring light to the awful things that were being done to the African-American community. How unfair is it for Colin Kaepernick to have lost his spot in the NFL and he's not able to play another game? No teams will pick him up because of the controversy that he went through, all because he just wanted to show his support to his African-American people. There's no secret that there's been racial injustice in America due to the corrupt system that the police officers have to go through in order to become a police officer. Obviously, at the time, Trayvon Martin was trending on social media platforms and everyone around the world saw what had happened to him. Not only do sports bring awareness to just what's going on in the sport, it brings awareness to other current events because of athletes and athletes using their platforms to speak on things that they should be speaking on. We have given athletes such a big platform and some of those athletes don't use it in the right way, but some do. And when they do, they are punished for not sticking to the status quo and just only speaking on things that have to do with sports. But isn't that what we want? Don't we want these people with these big platforms to speak on things that need to be spoken on, like current events? Especially with things that happened so recently in 2020 with George Floyd and we had so many athletes going to marches, protesting with regular people and just showing their support for the black community and using their voice in the right way. It's hard to say whether or not social media is good or bad for the sports community. I could probably go on and on about so many different effects it has. I think the beauty of it all is social media has grown so much throughout the years and social media has enabled people to communicate better with each other. It's amazing to see the progress not only in the sports world, but the social media world too. When you merge two influential elements of today's world, it often sparks something that is truly remarkable and things would not be the same if we did not have social media in sports. Thank you.