Twitter’s recent moves to add as much live sport to their platform as possible took an interesting turn this weekend with the arrival of BT Sport’s Score programme, streamed live on the social media platform.

In the UK, live football cannot be shown on TV between 2.45pm and 5.15pm – the so-called “3pm blackout” – which is designed to protect lower league football teams who may have fears that their attendances would plummet if live Premier League games which take place at the same time were shown live on screen.

That law, and the fact that TV audiences in UK can’t watch live 3pm games, means that Twitter has become a go-to place for a football fan who’s team is playing at the traditional Saturday afternoon kick-off time. Following the games on social media, or watching any of the various “goals-as-they-go-in” programmes on Sky Sports, BT Sport and the BBC are popular ways of keeping abreast of the huge amount of fixtures all taking place at the same time.

And streaming BT Sport’s Score seems like a mutually beneficial relationship: whereas the broadcaster gets a wider audience for their programme which includes plenty of well-known pundits following and commenting on the live games, Twitter gets to add more sport to its portfolio and links its platform even more strongly with Saturday afternoon football in the minds of those following the games they can’t watch live as they happen.

Twitter’s status as the go-to place for following live sport is nothing new, of course, but it’s started to become fairly universally accepted. So much so that clubs themselves are putting more and more effort into covering the games with gifs and bespoke images created to announce their lineups and celebrate their goals.

Hartlepool United, last season relegated from the Football League and now a National League team, captured the imaginations of football fans all over the world with their Football Manager computer game inspired goal gif this week.

Jake Cassidy levels for Pools (71 mins) #HARvCHE pic.twitter.com/DfvcNI9HFe

— Hartlepool United FC (@Official_HUFC) August 15, 2017

The start of the new season hasn’t just been a chance for Twitter and the social media departments of football clubs to showcase their planning for the new season, though. That’s also true for the media.

Over the last few weeks, more and more podcasts have sprung up to compete for the attention of football fans over the course of the season. ‘Sports entertainment’ certainly isn’t a new term, but perhaps it’s a more accurate one to describe the proliferation of ‘entertainment’ around sport. Chat show style podcasts are the new sporting water-cooler chat, it seems, but standing out from the crowd and monetising the platform are the two main challenges that new podcasters seem to face. Football publisher Squawka – perhaps best known for their statistics platform – have teamed up with Deezer to bring a weekly football podcast to the public, bringing audio-based entertainment and football together on a Thursday, building up to a big weekend of sport.