A Weekend Full Of The NFL Violating Its Own Social Media Video Content Rules

from the hike! dept

Wed, Oct 12th 2016 1:01pm — Timothy Geigner

We had just discussed the NFL's strange edict to its member teams to significantly scale back the amount of video content they were sharing from NFL games, particularly during lead-ups to kickoff. As the news came out alongside some fairly significant reports of ratings drops for the NFL, many, including this writer, assumed that the NFL thought that such video content was a factor in the viewership decline. The NFL, meanwhile, denied this, instead claiming that the ratings drops had more to do with the election season, noting how many people were busily watching Presidential debates, with many of us watching whatever car-wreck zombie-apocalypse our political discourse has devolved into.

Whether that's true or not, it certainly seems as though the NFL itself does not think of video content and social media as some kind of enemy to ratings after all. Over this past weekend, immediately after its edict to its teams went out, the NFL was pushing even more video content out via social media than it had in the past.

If the league is panicking about the distribution of highlights on social media cutting into ratings, though, no one told their social-media managers, because pretty much every major play in an NFL game yesterday was posted almost immediately to the league’s Twitter account, often with preroll ads attached.

Ok, so what do we make of this? Well, as with many things to do with the NFL, the takeaways are both good and bad. The good is that the NFL clearly understands that video content blackouts are a thing of the past and that such content is a great driver for ratings, and not the opposite. But the bad is that the NFL seems to think that a top-down approach to controlling such content is the best approach to targeting viewers.

And that's just dumb. Not only dumb, in fact, but demonstrably silly. As I mentioned in the original post, the markets that host NFL teams are wildly diverse, from major markets like New York and Chicago -- and now Los Angeles --, to relatively tiny markets like Green Bay and Charlotte. A one-size-fits-all marketing approach never made sense for NFL teams, but before the days of digital media there wasn't a great deal in terms of diversity that could be achieved. But in the social media age? Marketing can be targeted and approached in a way tailored to specific fan-bases and markets. Why in the world would the NFL think that it had a better handle than each individual team, all of which employ their own social media managers, as to how to best drive viewership and attendance?

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Filed Under: football, social media
Companies: nfl

12 Comments

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Rana, 12 Oct 2016 @ 1:19pm

It's only bad when other people do it.
Kind of like torture.
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Oct 2016 @ 1:19pm

How to, the NFL Inc. way
See, in the boardroom the NFL powers that be were having a discussion about how their drop in revenue was like being taken to the cleaners when a young intern entered and said there was a question from the press. The old fogies misinterpreted the statement and told her to get an iron while they ironed out the way things were gonna be. She hesitated, then blurted out that the press wasn't from the dry cleaners, but from social media. As the octogenarians were concentrating on their dictum's, they only heard social, and thought the media was the ice cream served at such events. They were thinking strawberry, cool and creamy, and that's when the zombies entered into the conversation and the meeting turned into a car wreck.

Subsequently, they adjourned for the day and returned calls to the various franchises seeking clarification. This is when they realized that the videos were necessary, but they just had to keep their hand in the game. Slowly, very slowly, they also realized that the yapping dogs were actually biting, so they said they would send more videos for release in order to quell the angry pack.

They were plenty pleased with their decisiveness in action.
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I.T. Guy, 12 Oct 2016 @ 1:21pm

"car-wreck zombie-apocalypse"
LOL. At this point they need to evolve a little to reach that level.

When I think NFL I think... Efilnikufesin. Maybe Anthrax's lawyers should intervene.

It's funny to watch these multi-billion dollar companies so scared to try new things.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Oct 2016 @ 1:47pm

Re: It's only bad when other people do it.
Or anything else politicians when the support spying or anything else they want to do to their citizens, and those of other countries.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Oct 2016 @ 2:00pm

Just like the **AA's, one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. They do press releases about how X is bad, unaware that x is being done by another division...
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bob, 12 Oct 2016 @ 2:05pm

no mutual benefits allowed.
I think the NFL just wants to squeeze every penny possible from every video and ad possible. If a player or member of the support staff post something the league doesn't necessarily see any direct monetary gain from people watching. Even if it will reach more people and potentially bring in more fans and money the NFL just wants to maintain absolute control which will ultimately limit how much money they actually make.

The same issue was brought up in a previous TechDirt post about the guy that cut off his business product because someone else (the re-sellers on eBay) also profited.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Oct 2016 @ 2:10pm

Re: no mutual benefits allowed.
The more remote the association with actually creating anything of value a person is, the stronger their desire to keep control over the product and any profit to be made from it.
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Nate (profile), 12 Oct 2016 @ 2:54pm

this is not the blackout you are looking for
"Ok, so what do we make of this?"

Maybe they just wanted to sell ads:

"pretty much every major play in an NFL game yesterday was posted almost immediately to the league’s Twitter account, often with preroll ads attached"
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Oct 2016 @ 3:30pm

Re: this is not the blackout you are looking for
Yup
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 12 Oct 2016 @ 3:54pm

The problem is that this is yet another supposed association of members where the the apparatus that serves as the interface between members is actually a ruling party with its own interests which may have nothing to do with those of its vassals.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Oct 2016 @ 6:00am

Stadiums are walled gardens, seems they're using the apple approach
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Glen, 17 Oct 2016 @ 9:47am

Here is one way the teams are looking at to get around the rule..... http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/10/17/browns-eagles-find-perfect-way-to-sidestep-in-game-s ocial-media-highlight-ban/#comments
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