Social media coverage of the Olympics

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Olympic Logo Olympic rings without rims.svg
Olympic Logo

Over the years, television broadcast rights have distinguished what Olympic-related content can be accessed by fans online. By doing so, mobile-friendly social platforms began to integrate into the Olympics. Athletes and fans use these platforms to share live updates, special moments, and behind-the-scenes specials. [1]

Contents

The rise of social video and social broadcasting technology has provided a huge opportunity for Olympic athletes, teams, and sponsors to bring coverage to fans like never before. Olympic-related content has infiltrated all forms of social media, including Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. It is expected to expand in the coming years. [1]

Background

The Olympics is able to advertise to its viewers and its host country with the use of data it collects through Social media marketing. Prominent social media platforms include: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, Google, MSN, Yahoo and many more. Campaign Initiatives and Artificial Intelligence technologies have been used to analyze the social media content of users. Information from consumers such as their preferences, demographics, age and locality are all analyzed to gain consumer insight. Campaign initiatives and AI technologies were used for such purposes in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and are in use currently. [2] Social media marketing of the Olympics is a new phenomena, beginning prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics [3]

Variations

There are two classifications of social media marketing recognized by the IOC:

2008 Beijing Summer Olympics

Social media marketing emerged as a phenomenon during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which progressed as a marketing and an advertising tactic ever since. [5] The Beijing Olympics became the test subject for social media marketing initiatives started by advertising agencies. In 2008, social media marketing began the transition from one-sided communication to mass communication of the Olympic Games. Although social media marketing of the Olympic Games began in 2008, the audience to the Olympics was still primarily reached through television–reaching an audience of 4.3 billion viewers. At the time, the viewers of the Olympic Games through Internet website platforms made up an audience of approximately 390 million individuals.[ citation needed ]

What was the beginning of Olympic social media marketing, was also the beginning of a more globalized experience of the Olympic Games via social media. Twitter, now a prominent social media platform, began in 2006 and grew to three million active users by the beginning of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Members of Facebook, another prominent social media platform, tracking the Olympic Games grew from approximately one million during the Olympic Games of Athens 2004 to 90 million during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. [5] Social media use, in general, increased by 24 percent between 2007 and 2008–from 63 percent of U.S. adults to 87 percent of U.S. adults. [6]

2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) deemed The Vancouver Winter Olympics as "the first social media games” based on its fan base through social media platforms. [7] The IOC launched their Facebook page a month before the games began, attracting 1.5 million fans. Shifting to online viewing attracted a younger audience than past Olympic games with over 60 percent of Facebook fans being under 24 years of age. [7]

Shaun White Shaun White 27913015.jpg
Shaun White

Athletes like Lindsey Vonn and Shaun White reached fans on social media as the platform posted behind-the-scenes coverage on their experiences. [7] The IOC used social media to create competitions between athletes and fans streamed online. Its YouTube channel hosted a “Best of Us” challenge in which the public could compete in games with their favorite athletes, acquiring three million viewers. [7] Photos spread across social media platforms, such as Flickr, which had 11,000 photos posted by 600 photographers, bringing a new perspective to the games. [7]

Twitter contributed constant live updates of the competitions. The IOC's Twitter following doubled to 12,000 followers during the Vancouver Olympics, creating a larger viewer population for the games. [7] The IOC created social media guidelines as more athletes and fans got online to interact with the Olympics. [8] Social media was still relatively new as a marketing platform, so these guidelines confused many individuals. [8]

2012 London Summer Olympics

The London 2012 Olympic Games succeeded in broadcasting, participation and marketing. For the first time, the IOC broadcast the Olympic Games live and on-demand through YouTube, [9] allowing fans to access the Games anytime, anywhere through live streaming. [10] The combination of conventional broadcasting and mobile platforms reached a global audience of 4.8 billion people. [10]

Social media soared with Facebook, Twitter and Google+, attracting 4.7 million followers. Athletes shared photographs, interacted online with fans and updated daily, either in person or via an agent. [11] Instagram was established by 2012, making itself a premier photo-sharing platform perfect for athletes to capture their emotions. [12] Lewis Wiltshire, head of sport for Twitter UK said, "Never before have fans had such direct access to their sporting heroes." [13]

Usain BoltLondon2012 Usain BoltLondon2012.jpg
Usain BoltLondon2012

Social media created conversation on fan opinions regarding athletes, including 962,756 total mentions of Usain Bolt, “Fastest Man in History,” who defended the 100 meter and 200 meter gold medals. Michael Phelps followed with 828,081 total mentions. [14]

Olympic sponsors were active on social media; created several campaigns to promote their brands; and inspired viewers with mass participation and personalized events. [15] The Adidas “Take the Stage” Campaign recognized talent around the world, installing a photo booth and inviting the 550 Olympics athletes to take the stage. (IOC Marketing Report 2012). David Beckham surprised fans at the photo booth in Westfield shopping centre, gaining popularity in UK media. Coca-Cola, Acer Inc., McDonald's, Visa Inc. and several others used similar tactics of participation to attract viewers. [9]

2014 Sochi Winter Olympics

Channels

The 2014 Winter Olympic Games were held in Sochi, a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, establishing the first “social media Olympics” for Russia. The most popular Russian social media and networking service, VK, created an Olympic page, similar to Facebook's. The Olympic VK page has 2.8 million fans and—the most popular official community on the platform. [16] Throughout the games, VK had 54 million Olympic mentions, an average of 1.5 million per day. [16]

Numbers grew on other social media pages: more than 2 million fans joined the Olympic Facebook page, 168,101 followed the Olympic Twitter, 150,000 followed the Olympic Instagram and three million visited the Olympic website in February 2014. [16] There were 90,000 total updates on social media by Sochi 2014 Olympians and teams. The United States was the most active country during the games logging 22,598 posts across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. [16]

Engagement

With social media there is also hashtags. The most popular hashtag was #sochi2014 with almost 11,000 uses. The next top five hashtags were #wearewinter, #teamusa, #olympics, #goaus and #wirfuerD. [17] Another popular hashtag was #Sochiproblems, depicting local struggles. Photos of the poor state of Sochi on all platforms made the games the number one trending topic one week before the opening ceremony. #SochiFail and #SochiProblems gave multiple reports of the poor living arrangements, incomplete construction, broken elevators, and polluted waters. This was one way that social media provided awareness to its users. [17]

Media Perceptions

Media perceptions varied during the games; the Olympics was viewed as a confrontation between Eastern and Western Civilizations. The LGBT community took a stand against the games. Sponsors for the games including Coca-Cola, Mcdonald's, and P&G protested against Russian authorities and Russian anti-LGBT laws. [17] Many protests took a stand against Russian laws, which created a discussion between human rights advocates. Advocates believed organizations should not promote certain values in western markets while supporting an anti-human rights government in another market. [17]

2016 Rio Summer Olympics

Thomas Bach Thomas Bach (13951010204).jpg
Thomas Bach

Social media marketing was an influential tool in the promotion and analysis of the 2016 Rio Olympics. Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee said that the power of sport demonstrates that diversity and interconnectedness can enlighten us all. [18] With over 25,000+ sources of accredited media covering the games, the 2016 games were the most consumed Olympic games to date. [18] Marketing for the Rio Olympics began in 2013 and ultimately lasted 3 years. There were 26 million visits to Olympic.org, the official website of the Olympic games, and over 7 billion views of official Olympic content on social media. [18] There were over 270 digital media platforms covering the games and active engagement throughout various social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. [18]

Twitter saw over 187 million tweets inspired by the Rio Olympics, a 24.6 percent increase from the 2012 Summer Olympics. [19] The 187 million tweets generated nearly 75 billion Twitter impressions. [19] It is important to note that throughout this same period, Twitter nearly doubled in size in terms of users, suggesting that there could have been an even larger growth in Twitter engagement. The hashtag, #Rio2016 was official content created by the IOC to generate buzz and encourage engagement. [20]

Facebook saw 277 million people interact 1.5 billion times regarding the 2016 games. [19] Comparatively to the London games, which saw 116 million posts, there was a significant increase in interaction. Facebook also used the Rio Olympics to debut their Sponsored Photo Frame aspect as an alternative method of advertising revenue and marketing outreach. The idea behind this innovation was to present a new advertising opportunity for the platform and to encourage alternative interaction in a similar way to which Snapchat uses paid and sponsored geographic filters. [20]

The Rio Olympics was the first Olympics to utilize snapchat as a marketing tool. [12] NBC directly partnered with Snapchat and Buzzfeed to promote the 2016 games. [12]

2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics

The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics were postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Olympic fans took to social media to discuss and manage their emotions regarding the postponement. Some platforms explained the sequence of events that led to the postponement, while other shared historical moments. On Twitter, users used the postponement as a way to explain how dangerous the pandemic really is, as well as to bolster political arguments. The hashtag #tokyo2021 offered optimism among the negativity and fear. [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2014 Winter Olympics</span> Multi-sport event in Sochi, Russia

The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXII Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Sochi 2014, were an international winter multi-sport event that was held from 7 to 23 February 2014 in Sochi, Russia. Opening rounds in certain events were held on 6 February 2014, the day before the opening ceremony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2016 Summer Olympics</span> Multi-sport event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The 2016 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad and officially branded as Rio 2016, were an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with preliminary events in some sports beginning on 3 August. Rio de Janeiro was announced as the host city at the 121st IOC Session in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 2 October 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">User-generated content</span> Online content created by users

User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is generally any form of content, such as images, videos, audio, text, testimonials, and software, that has been posted by users on online content aggregation platforms such as social media, discussion forums and wikis. It is a product consumers create to disseminate information about online products or the firms that market them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ambush marketing</span> Type of marketing strategy

Ambush marketing or ambush advertising is a marketing strategy in which an advertiser "ambushes" an event to compete for exposure against other advertisers.

Social television is the union of television and social media. Millions of people now share their TV experience with other viewers on social media such as Twitter and Facebook using smartphones and tablets. TV networks and rights holders are increasingly sharing video clips on social platforms to monetise engagement and drive tune-in.

Social network advertising, also known as social media targeting, is a group of terms used to describe forms of online advertising and digital marketing that focus on social networking services. A significant aspect of this type of advertising is that advertisers can take advantage of users' demographic information, psychographics, and other data points to target their ads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Live streaming</span> Live broadcasting via the Internet

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hashtag</span> Metadata tag prefixed with #

A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash symbol, #. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Tumblr as a form of user-generated tagging that enables cross-referencing of content by topic or theme. For example, a search within Instagram for the hashtag #bluesky returns all posts that have been tagged with that term. After the initial hash symbol, a hashtag may include letters, numerals, or underscores.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media and television</span> Emerging platforms

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hashtag activism</span> Use of hashtags for internet activism

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Rule 40 is a by-law in the Olympic Charter stating that only approved sponsors may reference "Olympic-related terms". It was introduced by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to prevent so-called ambush marketing by companies who are not official sponsors and to sanction links between athletes and unofficial sponsors during a blackout period starting nine days before the opening of the Olympic Games and continuing until three days after the closing ceremony.

Facebook Stories are short user-generated photo or video collections that can be uploaded to the user's Facebook. Facebook Stories were created on March 28, 2017. They are considered a second news feed for the social media website. It is focused around Facebook's in-app camera which allows users to add fun filters and Snapchat-like lenses to their content as well as add visual geolocation tags to their photos and videos. The content is able to be posted publicly on the Facebook app for only 24 hours or can be sent as a direct message to a Facebook friend.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NBA digital marketing</span>

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is one of the fastest growing sports leagues in the United States. In 2017, NBA broadcast game ratings had increased by 32% since the previous season, the 2017 NBA Finals had 20.4 million total viewers with an additional 434,000 digital streaming viewers in 215 countries and territories, in 49 languages. The growth of NBA viewership is related to its path to globalization and their digital marketing campaigns, which has allowed the NBA to expand their brand awareness and sponsorship deals across borders. The NBA started its globalization strategy by holding international exhibition games between NBA teams and international teams in different countries, as well as inviting over 110 international players to join the league.

References

  1. 1 2 "How Social Media Changed the Olympics, and What It Means for #Rio2016". Later Blog. 2016-08-11. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  2. ↑ Hamilton, Caitlin (February 24, 2010). "Olympic Marketing Matches Made in Social Media Heaven". Wired . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  3. ↑ Liu, Yinya (2016). "The Development of Social Media and its Impact on the Intercultural Exchange of the Olympic Movement" (PDF). The International Journal of the History of Sport. 33 (12): 1395–1410. doi:10.1080/09523367.2017.1285285. S2CID   151601049.
  4. ↑ Peterson, Wally (September 2, 2016). "Medal Winning Social Media Campaigns from the Olympics". Sendible Insights. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  5. 1 2 Liu, Yinya (February 21, 2017). "The Development of Social Media and its Impact on the Intercultural Exchange of the Olympic Movement" (PDF). The International Journal of the History of Sport. 33 (12): 1395–1410. doi:10.1080/09523367.2017.1285285. S2CID   151601049.
  6. ↑ Devault, Gigi (October 27, 2016). "Case Study - The Olympic Games and Social Media". The Balance. Retrieved 6 March 2018.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Vancouver 2010: The First Social Media Games". International Olympic Committee. March 22, 2010. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  8. 1 2 Mcclusky, Mark (February 5, 2010). "Athletes Confused by Olympic Social Media Rules". Wired . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  9. 1 2 IOC Marketing Report. International Olympic Committee.
  10. 1 2 "London 2012 Facts and Figures". Worldarchery.com. November 23, 2012. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  11. ↑ Pfanner, Eric (July 2, 2012). "Social Media's Role in London Games Grows With Surge in Users". The New York Times . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  12. 1 2 3 Barkho, Gabriela (August 11, 2016). "How Social Media Changed the Olympics, and What it Means for #Rio2016". Later.com. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  13. ↑ IOC London 2012 Marketing Report. International Olympic Committee.
  14. ↑ Laird, Sam (August 14, 2012). "2012 Olympics: The Social Media Winners". Mashable . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  15. ↑ "Social Media at Scale and London 2012". nesta.org.uk. Nesta . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  16. 1 2 3 4 "Sochi 2014 Social Media Metrics: Hot Numbers. Cool Conversations. All Yours". International Olympic Committee. 2016-07-21. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Petrescu, Diana (February 11, 2014). "Sochi 2014: How the Winter Olympic games are portrayed in social media". Business Review . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  18. 1 2 3 4 "IOC Rio 2016 Marketing Report". International Olympic Committee . Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  19. 1 2 3 Hutchinson, Andrew (August 24, 2016). "How the 2016 Rio Olympics Dominated Social Media". Social Media Today. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  20. 1 2 Barkho, Gabriella (2016-08-11). "How Social Media Changed the Olympics, and What it Means for #Rio2016". Later. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  21. ↑ Michel, Patrick St (2020-03-28). "Postponement of 2020 Olympics sends social media into a frenzy". The Japan Times Online. ISSN   0447-5763 . Retrieved 2020-04-14.
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