The Impact of Social Media on Major League Baseball

When Steve Jobs announced the release of the first iPhone On January 9, 2007, he could scarcely have believed the impact that the device would have on the world, and that’s saying something.

Jobs was one of life’s dreamers and even his foresight and high aspirations for Apple simply wouldn’t have been able to comprehend the lasting impact of the iPhone.

Like the wheel, the printing press, and the combustion engine, the smartphone has changed our day-to-day lives in untold ways. We use them to read, watch TV, attend virtual meetings, work, journal, buy food and clothes, and a great many more activities that we won’t bore you with.

One other thing that smartphones have been pivotal in is spreading the use of social media, without them it’s hard to imagine that people would be spending all evening sitting on their PCs scrolling through desktop versions of X, Facebook, and Instagram.

What though, you might ask, has anything of this got to do with Major League Baseball? Well, social media has had a huge impact on our favorite sport, changing how it’s viewed and enjoyed as well as furthering the sport’s reach around the globe.

In this article we take a closer look at social media and MLB, analyzing the three biggest impacts that the former has had on the latter.

MLB Betting

10 years ago if you wanted to bet on Major League Baseball your options would have been either incredibly limited or completely nil depending on where in the country you lived. Now if you want to check the latest MLB betting lines and make a wager you can do so all on your smartphone.

Whilst social media isn’t directly responsible for the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down PASPA a couple of years ago, it was a contributing factor. It highlighted firstly the intensity of feeling that people had for baseball and it also helped to shine a light on the contradictory nature of online sports betting.

Prior to PASPA being struck down baseball fans would routinely place bets with foreign betting companies on MLB games. Talk of this on social media sparked the debate about whether or not online sports betting should be legalized in the US – not just because of MLB, but other top American sports too.

Now social media is one of the most effective ways in which sports betting companies advertise to baseball fans. The latest MLB betting lines are regularly advertised on all of the major social media platforms.

Engagement

If you’re a millennial or older you’ll remember just how difficult it was to engage with your sporting heroes as a kid. Beyond waiting behind after games to meet your idols, your chance of meeting professional players was limited to chance encounters.

Social media has brought a whole new meaning to fan engagement allowing people to have almost 24/7 access to their favourite players.

This has contributed to a cult of personality developing in not just MLB but every major sport around the world in which it’s not uncommon to see people throwing their support behind individual players rather than teams.

Global Awareness

We like to think that our sports are the best and most popular on the planet, but if you’ve spent any time beyond these shores you’ll be aware of just how wrong that train of thought is.

Sure people in Britain are familiar with baseball and have heard of the New York Yankees, just like how the people of Spain are familiar with basketball, but in those two countries basketball and baseball are pretty much bottom of the pile when it comes to sports.

That’s because they have their own thriving domestic sports and because fans’ exposure to baseball and basketball in those countries is limited. That is, until now. Social media has opened up the world like never before and it is being used now to expose foreign markets to the thrills and spills of Major League Baseball.

Social media’s power as a marketing tool is hard to overstate. It has, rather unsurprisingly, been cited by industry experts as the number one reason for baseball’s growing global appeal.

MLB’s social media exposure has raised one burning question that may have to be answered conclusively before the sport can truly take off in certain countries – how can a game between teams from the same league be called ‘The World Series’?  Perhaps we’ll let someone else answer that particular question.

This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.