Sports Stars to Quit Twitter?

I and many others have long eulagised about how twitter has developed into this great platform for athletes to reconnect with their fans and give an insight into their lives.

But this last week the BBC reported a number of athletes who are thinking of leaving the site due to the issues they are finding when you open yourself up to live feedback from passionate supporters (and non-supporters).

Sometimes it may only be one fan who can overstep the mark and it can get out of hand, and this illustrates an issue we often overlook…. what about the intrusiveness, abuse and general negativity that they face almost daily?

One thing with twitter is that you can be anonymous if you so choose and this gives people the extra confidence they need to feel that there will be no retribution.  It is a bit like the difference between meeting someone face-to-face – most people will be polite and shy when they meet sports stars close up – and when they are part of a massive crowd at a football match – here they can be openly abusive (and it can get really bad) as they know there is no come back to them…they feel they can say what they want whether it is warranted or not.  It is their opportunity to vent all their frustrations.

Now you take this same view with Twitter; most will be happy to just listen to the athletes and not interact, a kind of cyber-stalking…but in a nice way.  Others will interact and have real profiles that are easily identifiable, then the final group who just want to give out abuse and wind people up to provoke a response.

So far we have seen the benefits of sports stars being on Twitter but are we approaching a point when some of them are just going to say “ENOUGH!” and leave to go back to their very private twitter-less bubble?

With Wayne Rooney and his 570,000 strong follower base all has been going very well recently, even I was dishing out some praise.  Then last week he reacted to a ‘fan’ by saying “I’ll put u asleep within 10 seconds” after receiving some abuse, before then describing it as ‘banter’.

Lee Westwood is another high profile tweeter  and he hit back last Thursday at a follower by describing him as “sad little person that needs to get a life”.  In an interview when asked about it he said, “Its social media, not social slagging.  Its losing its meaning with the sort of stuff that’s gone on just recently.”

“It seems to have turned into that for some people, having a go, which is a bit unfortunate.  We all get the odd idiot here and there – it’s just pathetic.  I suppose its there to interact with people and give them an idea of stuff they might not ordinarily be able to engage with, but people always take it too far and spoil it.”

His Ryder Cup team-mate Graeme McDowell has taken to ‘naming and shaming’ those who post abuse by retweeting the abusive ones and highlighting the problem.  He stated “its 98% support and 2% nastiness.  Every now and again I re-tweet to show how nasty people can be.”

“People open an account and all they want to do is abuse celebrities and sportsmen to try to get a response.  You try not to encourage them and generally I just block them, but if you want to stay on it you are going to have to accept some absolute trash that people talk.  Rooney has given them exactly what they want.  You can’t humour them by doing it.”

 So is Twitter reaching a critical point here in the UK with some our top stars and will they stay on the platform?  Is Sir Alex Ferguson right when he says “I don’t know why anybody can be bothered with that stuff… and (if a player wants to get closer to their supporters) it would be better if they did it on the pitch”.  

This all comes hot on the heals of Manchester United midfielder Darren Gibson’s infamous 4 hour stint on Twitter before he quit after receiving a deluge of negative tweets.  Now Sir Alex is saying that the club are reviewing their stance on players using it and Arsene Wenger warning of the dangers, it is the hot topic in football at the moment and could be an interesting summer.

A digital presence is still a important weapon for an athlete to have it their armoury but will it be that Twitter is the wrong place for them to be (or some of them anyway).  Could it be that Facebook will become more popular, where you can provide content without having to be as available in ‘real time’ but still give behind-the-scenes access (with moderation)?

What do you think?

About author

Daniel McLaren
Daniel McLaren 820 posts

Dan is the Founder & CEO of Digital Sport. Can be found at sports industry events and heard every week on the Digital Sport Insider podcast. @DanielMcLaren

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