Athletes tweeting during competition

We discussed NASCAR driver Brad Keslowski tweeting DURING a NASCAR race as well as the concerns od the AOC with athletes tweeting a test events for London Olympics.

Will they follow the lead of other sports like the NBA & which have banned in game tweeting after Shaq tweeted from the bench a few years ago.

Sports Geek Medals

This week we looked at bad boys of the sports Twitter world.

Bronze – Mark Cuban

Owner of the Mavs, not a constant bad boy but has been known to give the refs a serve on Twitter.  But he did match his $75K fine with a fine to charity.

Follow @mcuban

Silver – Brendan Fevola

Fev is true to his personality on Twitter not holding back when he is made fun of which is why people follow him for moments like this.

Follow @BrendanFevola25

Gold – Wayne Rooney

This is only a slip-up but might explain why Man U despite having 22M Facebook fans are still not on Twitter.  Here is how Wayne Rooney responded to a fan giving him grief.
Follow @waynerooney

Until next week

Here is more segments from today's show.

Tune into ABC Grandstand Breakfast over the Friday through Monday on ABC Grandstand digital radio.
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Podcast transcription

FRANK: Francis Leach here, Amanda Shalala as well on a Saturday morning and it’s time to welcome the Sports Geek, Sean Callanan, in to talk about sport in the digital world. Good Day Sean.

SEAN: Good day, Francis. Good Day, Amanda.

FRANK: How are you this morning mate?

SEAN: I’m good. I’m good.

FRANK: What are we talking about today?

SEAN: Well we’re talking about tweeting and being at games. We we’re talking about are athletes and participants tweeting because during the week at NASCAR, they actually had a NASCAR driver tweet a picture from inside the car.

FRANK: While he was driving?

SEAN: Well he wasn’t actually driving. There was a crash and there was a fire, so they all stopped and he was banked up and so he just pulled the phone out of his pocket, took a twit pic and said here’s my view of the fire. And it obviously caught fire on the internet and his followers grew and everyone started being engaged with NASCAR, and at the moment NASCAR is saying ‘that’s okay.’ There was a bit of, he has come back and said, “Well, you know, it’s not good to be tweeting while you’re driving.” He was parked at the time, but, yeah, a lot of the other teams and leagues have put a shutdown on tweeting in competition, so whether NASCAR keeps it up—Shaq once famously tweeted from the bench to say, famously, “Yo, I’m tweeting from the bench,” and so the NBA has rules now that they can’t tweet before and after games and Major League Baseball is the same, and even the Australian Olympic Committee is now struggling with swimmers tweeting while they’re at events waiting for their meets, and to a certain degree it is a little bit of a distraction for the athletes, as well, so a bit of a mix there.

AMANDA: What was he doing with his phone while he was competing? Why did he have it on him?

SEAN: Exactly…he pretty much just said it was in his pocket and I didn’t think the NASCAR racing suits had pockets. I’m sure there would’ve been a sponsor covering up the pocket hole, so apparently it was just in his pocket and he pulled it out and decided to tweet and engage his fans and sure enough he’s now got 250,000 followers for, effectively, a really good stunt, so, yeah, NASCAR okayed it for the time being but I really can’t see them continuing it.

FRANK: There’s a hypocrisy in all this. The Australian Olympic Committee, for instance, will ask you to send
herograms and will try to hook you up with a telegram so that you’ll spend a little bit of money. You will spend a couple cents with a certain telegram to send Stephanie Rice a herogram, and they make a fortune out of it. That’s all well and good, but if the athletes want to engage directly it’s ‘oh, no, no, no, no, no. You’re distracted. You’re distracting yourself,’ but if you read 2000 telegrams that’s okay. What a load of bollocks.

SEAN: It is a bit that. It is a bit like that. I mean the Olympics have gone and put in some new policies around what the athletes can and can’t do, so they’re allowed to tweet at this time. They weren’t actually allowed to do it at Beijing. Partly that was because it was in Beijing and the restrictions that were in China, but now the athletes can tweet in that first person mode. They’re apparently not allowed to give competition results because obviously that would cut the media rights, which I don’t think, you know, Stephanie Rice saying ‘Hey, I just did a PB.’ I think we’ll probably here about it on channel 9, 7, 10, ABC Grandstand before she gets to tweet about it.
They’re not allowed to do video, which again is to try to protect the video rights, and they’re not allowed to take pictures inside the Olympic village. So I guess that’s to stop the, ‘Hey, guys, look there’s LeBron James walking by,’ and just taking a twit pic while he’s sitting down having a burger, or something like that.

FRANK: Because it would be star-sporting central, Amanda, if you were in the Olympic village. If you say, with all due respect, if you see one the archery teams, or one of the more minor sport’s teams, and you’re sitting around and LeBron James walks past you are going to get a little bit excited.

AMANDA: Yes, of course.

SEAN: So there is a bit of, they’ve got to do it with the permission of the person they’re taking the picture of. So, obviously, if you got your arm around LeBron James and he’s happy to have a photo taken, then they can tweet that photo, so it’s a little bit of common sense and hopefully it does prevail, but it will be good to get a little bit of that insight from behind the scenes that we don’t get from traditional media, I guess.

FRANK: Who do you follow, Amanda? Who do you follow on Twitter from I guess the A-list of sports stars—who do you enjoy hearing from?

AMANDA: Oh, Quade Cooper is always good value because he just comes out with inane but interesting things—I guess or any of the Dragon’s players.

FRANK: Nah, that’s it. That’s a blind love.

AMANDA: I know you only like international superstars but I’m an Aussie sports fan, so I like following those sorts of athletes.

FRANK: Fair enough. Some of them are quite funny.

SEAN: Well that’s the thing. When I’m sort of training them and telling them what to do, I said they’ve got to provide more than just the, “Oh, I’m at training.” “I’m not at training.” “I’m heading to the game.” They’ve got to show their personality.

FRANK: I’m not too much a fan of Harry O’Brien’s faux Dali Lama shtick. That’s starting to wear a bit thin.

SEAN: It is a little bit too, just be pumping out the quote of the day sometimes. I think when he started off and he was actually talking backwards and forwards with fans and giving his own opinion, that was fine, but, yeah, if he’s just going to continue doing that he’s got to provide a little bit more variety. I agree.

FRANK: My favorite in the world of sport is Joey Barton from Queens Park Rangers.

AMANDA: Aw, he is great.

FRANK: He’s obviously swallowed a thesaurus sometime in the last twelve months and decided to deliver on Twitter, and he can sometimes go completely off base, but he’s never short of entertaining, Joey. He’s had a very colorful history in the English Premier League with a number of __ with Manchester City in New Castle and got into a lot of trouble, but he’s actually quite smart and outspoken. He actually gives you something beyond just a glib cliché or thinking about…

SEAN: He makes you think a little bit.

FRANK: He does. He’s really, really good value, but you don’t always agree with him. In fact you often don’t, but he does respond in kind so he’s top value.

SEAN: Yeah, and that’s the thing. They’ve got to participate in the ecosystem of Twitter, which is a bit of the backwards and forwards and the good with the bad. But, yes, they just can’t be that bland, and they’ve got to show what they’re interested in, so if they’re watching another sport and that’s what you do to find a lot of athletes—you know—you’ll see surfers watching NBA…

FRANK: I caught one the other day from St Kilda’s. Sam Fisher who was watching the Socceroos and said, “Oh, gee, I never knew soccer could be this exciting. They scored three times in three minutes.” As a St. Kilda fan I thought about writing back to him, “Sam, you played for the Saints. We’re kicking nine goals in the game. It was a special day. You’re not one to be talking about defensive football, my friend.”

SEAN: Exactly, exactly. So, yeah, it is interesting to see, you know. A lot of the AFL guys and the NRL guys watching are big NBA fans and you can tell when they’re tuning into the game because they’re sitting there just as much of a fan as everybody else.

FRANK: Yep, they’re different now. Before we let you go, a podium for this week, the bad boys of Twitter, the ones from the world of sport who are just a car wreck when it comes to tweeting.

SEAN: I had a look at this and there’re a lot of bad cases. One, so the bronze medal, even though he’s a really good guy, but he does use Twitter as a little bit of an outlet, the Dallas Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban, because he’s been known to give both the NBA hierarchy and the refs a blast. He probably is one of the only guys that helps the NBA make money from social media because he gets that many fines but the good part of it is he has matched his $75,000 fine back to charity.
Another one is a bit of a, you know, slice of life and seeing what these athletes are like, Brendan Fevola.

FRANK: Aw, Fev, from the AFL.

SEAN: Everyone follows Fev because we know he’s going to have that Twitter brain fight, and Wil Anderson locked him right up when there was a story…

FRANK: Can I read Wil’s quote.

SEAN: Yeah.

FRANK: Wil tweeted: Library has book returned after 27 years. In other news, Brendan Fevola raised his first dollar for MS Read-A-Thon, which is pretty insulting, and he got a response from…

SEAN: He got a pretty strong response, which you can’t read out.

FRANK: “Hey, something head, keep your poo gags to yourself,” basically.

SEAN: Effectively, yes.

FRANK: So now Wil has both Shannon Noll and Brendan Fevola who want to punch his lights out.

SEAN: Yep, pretty much, pretty much, and the thing is, you know, you can sort of see, it had 312 re-tweets, so everyone’s been following Brendan Fevola just for those kinds of outbursts, and I’m sure many more will come.

FRANK: The silver medal for Fev.

SEAN: Yeah, the silver medal for Fev, and then the gold medal for handling trolls, and all athletes have them, guys having a go at them, trying to dig at them, and Wayne Rooney who was getting stuck into some fan and he just decided to respond with, “I will put you to sleep within ten seconds. I hope you turn up because…” and he goes on, but he’s basically going to tell a fan he’s going to put him to sleep in ten seconds over Twitter, so not the best way to handle a troll and probably the reason why Manchester United, even though they got 22 million on Facebook, they’re not on Twitter at all.

FRANK: No? No official presence?

SEAN: Not at all. No official account. Officially they’ve said they see no mandatory reason or financial gain for them to be on Twitter and they just have not got a presence at all.

FRANK: Rio Ferdinand is out there.

SEAN: Oh, they got players and lots of their brand is out there, but they actually don’t have an official account, which is a strange thing with…

FRANK: The only thing in the world that’s bigger than Twitter is Manchester United.

SEAN: Well, effectively, yeah, you know, but they’re quite happy with their 22 million on Facebook and they
can’t see a reason for being on the platform at all, which is quite strange.

FRANK: There you go. Good day, mate. Thanks for coming in again.

SEAN: No worries.

FRANK: Sean Callanan, the Sports Geek, remember tell people how they can follow you.

SEAN: They can follow me @SeanCallanan on Twitter or @sportsgeekhq or sportsgeek.com.au.

FRANK: Sean Callanan the Sports Geek each week talking digital sports with us here on Grandstand Breakfast.