NFL, pro teams dish out videos to help fans stay in the booster business
While NFL fans cheer and party loud and long in parking lots and stadiums, a Paraqeet search of chatter around game day shows that, although fans’ posts may spark similar comments from others, they generally don’t spur lengthy back-and-forth banter — unless, of course, an insult is too large to ignore. Turns out the major opinion and conversation influencers around recent Steelers and Eagles games were the teams’ official handles and the NFL itself.
A look at pre-, actual and post-game day conversations surrounding Week 9 matchups of the Eagles and Los Angeles Chargers on Nov. 7 and the Steelers-Chicago Bears that Monday night shows fans love to retweet video clips of touchdowns and other dramatic plays. Although fans on both sides of the field maintain a steady commentary on what they think of the last play, call or mistake, there’s minor engagement among commenters — they’re mostly just adding their own comments to the fray.
The teams and the NFL, already known for its ability to promote its product endlessly, have taken note. The league scored big numbers — 258 retweets and 1,686 likes — with a pregame highlight reel of Steelers T.J. Watt and Cam Heyward wreaking havoc on other teams.
Chicago fans, while no less passionate about their hometown boys, were a little less cocky, considering they’ve appeared in the playoffs only twice in the last 10 years and lost both wild-card games. Their top influencer was a post from the official Bears handle of a graphic depicting actual bears on a Pittsburgh bridge.
It spurred a thread of chatter about the tough-looking graphics in comparison to the team’s performance.
Another hit — 252 retweets and 1,791 likes — among Bears supporters was an NFL video clip showing Chicago recovering a Steelers fumble for a touchdown. But several questionable officiating calls against Chicago — particularly a late-game taunting call — led fans to end the night in solidarity on Twitter by dissing the referees.
Eagles and Chargers fans behaved much like the Steelers and Bears fans, with some of their most popular tweets sharing clips of touchdowns and quarterback acrobatics from the team handles and from the NFL.
The league, seeming to keep a tally of which team it featured, was equally quick to give Chargers fans clips to share their team’s feats.
However, the Chargers unleashed a tweet storm among fans of both teams with a snarky post after their win over the Eagles.
That spawned a series of expected epithets between the two fan bases.
And, perhaps the one tweet no one can answer but may sum up every game day.
