Sports leagues and teams have an obvious need for Social Intelligence, as they need to know what their players are up to and make sure that no one is saying or doing anything to embarrass their brand. However, there are a lot more ways that teams, leagues, and sponsors can (and should) be using social media. Specifically, there are three main ways to use Social Intelligence when it comes to sports:

    1.     Security
    2.     Online Reputation
    3.     Customer Support

We currently work with one of the “big 4” sports leagues in America, helping them use social media for security purposes. This means that they use our platform to monitor for anyone posting menacing threats online about specific players and stadiums, determining whether the person is actually at the game and then taking appropriate measures to make sure that the security risk is handled and taken care of.  The ability to quickly and efficiently track specific keywords and phrases and be able to geo-target the posters is something that is crucial for every sports team and league.

While a sports franchise or league obviously wants to keep track of their online reputation, the brands that spend massive amounts of money really need to know whether their sponsorship investment is paying off. Sponsoring a team or league is a great way to get brand recognition among a much wider and broader audience, however, it is important to know if the investment is paying off. Proper Social Intelligence tools can give you that answer. For example, using our Social Reputation Score, you can monitor how your online reputation may or may not improve during a sponsorship campaign. Being able to have access to this concrete ROI information is the most important thing that a brand can have when they are paying big sponsorship money.

Finally, in today’s world of ultra-HD TVs, fantasy sports and TV packages that allow access to any and every game at any time, sports teams and leagues are desperately trying to find ways to get fans to come to games and not watch them at home. Attendance figures are crucial for a sport’s survival, and this is why it is important to be able to use social media for real-time customer support issues during a game. When fans post about poor WiFi, food options, dangerously rowdy fans, etc., it is important for the leagues and teams to be able to immediately respond and be able to work to fix the issues.

The sports industry is one that has many uses for Social Intelligence; feel free to read some of our sports-related case-studies to learn more.