How Social Media Has Revolutionized Sports Marketing

Social media has been in existence for nearly a decade and a half, and since then has made countless changes to the world. But how has it affected the marketing strategies of sports brands and athletes?

Since Instagram’s inception in 2010, most sports teams have dedicated wings of their marketing department to content creation for social media. But as trends change and new apps pop up, sports-related social media has been forced to grow alongside the platforms. As social media grows, marketing departments have to grapple with brand deals that include social media promotion, monitoring player social media, and promoting online interaction with fans. 

“Almost all marketing deals now include a social media aspect,” says Jamie Han, the head of social media at Excel Sports Management, an agency that works with sports players to help them manage their brand deals. They work with a wide range of clients including Jared Goff, Jamal Murray, and Derek Jeter. Han originally worked with the Los Angeles Rams up until 2021 and managed social media for the Georgia Bulldogs in college. During her professional career, the landscape of social media has evolved to include not just Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), but apps used by younger audiences like TikTok and Snapchat. 

“TikTok really changed the landscape of social media. At first, it was just dancing, but then it quickly became about following the trends. It’s different from other social media apps because it’s more phone-friendly,” said Han. As TikTok became more popular, brands shifted to fit the demographics of the apps they were putting out content on. “For a while, we posted similar things on Instagram and TikTok, but now Instagram is shifting back to photos and photo dumps. Twitter is somewhere that is more text-based, so we use that for live news. Facebook is kind of a free-for-all, they have an established audience and are pretty video-focused,” says Christie Aguilar, who has been Social Media Manager at the Los Angeles Rams since 2021. 

But why are brands trying to work with players and organizations through social media? The answer is recognition. “If they [the players] have 500,000 or 3,000,000 followers, brands are going to want to partner with them, either to get their names out or to get people to buy their products,” said Han. Sports teams, however, are different from individual players, and brands work with them in order to be seen as working with big-ticket organizations. Then, it’s up to the team how to fit them in. “Brands want to be seen working with sports teams, and we have to work them in where it makes sense. For example, Gatorade is a team partner, and since they are all about performance we would put them on a post about stats,” said Aguilar. 

One little-known fact about professional social media is that as brands, they are limited on platforms like Instagram and TikTok to non-copyrighted sounds. This poses a problem, as most trends use sounds with some sort of copyright. “Some people can get away with it, in the NFL we definitely can’t. Instagram and TikTok give us different ad-free sounds we can use, so often we can’t mix those videos between apps without changing sound. But if someone posts a bad cover of a song that then becomes trending, we could use that. If worst comes to worst, we can create our own audios and manipulate our voices or sounds,” explained Aguilar. 

Working with individual players is very different from working with a team, either professional or college. “All sports players should have social media,” said Han. Having social media gives players more opportunities for brand partnerships, and more opportunities to make a profit out of it and, for lesser-known players, put their names out there. The biggest challenge is making sure the ad can fit into a player’s profile seamlessly. “We want what the players post to align with what they are putting on their platforms. Outfits are a great way to do that. If Jared Goff wore an Abercrombie shirt to Monday night football, it would be easy to get the picture and post it on Instagram, and it would fit in with the rest of the stuff he puts out on social media,” Han explained. 

An ad posted by @jaredgoff on Instagram 

Both Han and Aguilar emphasized how important it is to keep a good reputation for either yourself or your team on social media. Some teams make their presence online all about poking fun at other teams or players, while some focus on their own performance. And for some, it has to align with what your brand stands for. “You have to know your audience and know yourself. If you are a luxury brand, you aren’t going to be posting memes,” Han said. “We have to make sure that what we are putting out aligns with our brand. It’s not just the social media team – it’s the president and PR and the whole group.” 

In the 2024 offseason, the Las Vegas Raiders posted a video online trolling their divisional rival’s quarterback, two-time MVP and three-time Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes. It quickly backfired, with fans pointing out in the comments that Mahomes, who is 10-2 against the Raiders, had just won a Super Bowl in Las Vegas’s own stadium. For some teams, posting things like that is something that they do every day. For the Rams, something like that would never happen. “Our content has to fit us as a brand. We are pretty established and our brand is all about being humble and competitive, so we are going to post things that align with that. We may have fun with that when we beat a rival, but nothing crazy. We aren’t going to post something about Cooper Kupp saying how dominant he is, because it’s not in his personality to say something like that. But with Jared Verse or in the past with Jalen Ramsey, we would do that because it fits their personal brand,” Aguilar explained. 

A graphic posted by @nuggets on Instagram to promote the start of their season