Although my sport (boxing) doesn’t lend itself to tweeting in the same ways, I can certainly see the marketing value of allowing basketball players their halftime tweets, or soccer players some sideline tweets. Hell, I’d be glued to Twitter right this minute if Gina Carano was tweeting during these hours leading up to her history-making fight tonight with Cris Cyborg Santos.

In fact, I don’t see why we shouldn’t follow the same rule on it that is followed in all sports: if it interferes with the outcomes, change it. If sideline tweets from the soccer team causes the team to be less focused in general, or the marketing win is outweighed by traditional media outrage (surely a less and less potent force these days), then shift gears. If a b-ball player isn’t delivering points when that’s what they’re paid to do, they will be pretty motivated to make change. Most athletes are powerfully focused on their sport, but we also realize the importance of fans.

Nice post. I’d love to see a follow-up report.

Sitting on the sidelines, sure, they should be watching, cheering on their teammates, looking at the coach for gameplan changes, but at halftime? Halftime is literally a break in the game.

Taking 30 seconds to tweet during a break doesn’t seem like too much disruption or distraction.

Unprecedented access would be seeing a Sir Alex half time talk aired on Sky Sports. Or a shot from the Real Madrid lockerroom at full time. Not some players texting in their thoughts.

It because they are PLAYERS. And that is their job when the game is going on, to play!

I get it. I do. I understand the value of social media, netowrking, etc etc. But at some point, it just becomes a bit ridiculous.

Yes, soccer does have to be marketed a different way, and it is good to embrace a new technology for the league. But a bunch of players sitting on the sideline tweeting in random thoughts during a game just seems a bit much to me.

If you do it at halftime, okay, that’s one thing, but to do it during the game, that is another.

Things do not have to be so instaneous all of the time now. It is starting to be the typical ‘give it to me now’ attitude.

If I was a coach I would be furious. Leave reporting to the fans to your own time, regardless of the sport. When you are on the field, you are ready to play, you aren’t ready to send ‘tweets’.