With TikTok Under Siege, Sports Brands Game Out Their Social Strategies
A TikTok ban, which is still being discussed in halls of power, would shake up sports’ social media scene. The short-form video app’s sudden status as a must-activate channel has changed how sports organizations do business, becoming a critical platform for building global fan bases, reaching young viewers and developing new voices.
But what might look like a potential crossroads moment for the whole social media industry would really be more like a regular workday in a job marked by constant changes—just another Wednesday, so to speak.
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In May, Montana’s governor signed a bill that would ban TikTok in the state (TikTok responded by suing, alleging the law is unconstitutional). Meanwhile, a new bill in the U.S. Senate would regulate how the service is able to export Americans’ personal data to other countries.
“We’re not watching C-SPAN 24/7, but we definitely have Google News alerts, and everybody is following the trades and trends where it looks to be headed,” Doug Bernstein, Warner Bros. Discovery SVP for digital sports strategy, said.
Despite the uncertainty around the platform’s future, Bernstein said TikTok remains a priority for the company, which operates popular Bleacher Report, House of Highlights, and other accounts, largely because of how much time younger audiences are spending there.
“Sports content and culture is thriving on TikTok,” TikTok global head of sports Harish Sarma said in a statement given to Sportico. “Today, more than ever before, brands and publishers are leveraging their ability to connect with and positively influence the TikTok sports community.”
Keeping up with TikTok’s changing features and trends is a full-time job in itself; the platform going poof would be disruptive, sure, but social strategists don’t have time to worry about that. If they lose a pulse on what works on TikTok now, it might as well be their brand going dark.
Oh, and every other social site is shifting, too. YouTube is responding to TikTok’s success by emphasizing its own scrolling vertical video format. Reddit is battling with users for control. Facebook is tweaking its algorithm, Instagram is introducing AI tools, Twitch is changing its branded content policies. Twitter is… well, you know.
If Utah Jazz senior director of content Angie Treasure could learn one thing about how all of those moves play out by this time next year, her first question would be, “What’s still around?”
“The only thing constant in social media is that you can only affect what you can affect, and there will be change,” she said in an interview.
With 3.8 million followers, the Jazz have the second biggest TikTok account in the NBA (trailing only the Warriors with 5.6 million). But Treasure is already thinking about what other platforms might offer similar features. Yes, in part because of the legal questions surrounding TikTok, but also because these apps wax and wane in popularity, regardless of whether the government intervenes. For example, Treasure said her team is looking more at YouTube, which is pushing a Shorts tool built around similarly quick, vertical video.
No matter what happens next, TikTok has had two major impacts on the way sports brands use social media. First, the vertical video and unvarnished style it has helped popularize won’t go anywhere, and neither will the entertainment content sports brands have been forced to embrace, over simple information or traditional highlights. Second, its algorithmic approach to delivering users recommended videos has changed the way brands operate, as they are no longer able to rely on built-in fanbases.
“Everybody is famous, which in a way makes nobody famous,” Bernstein said. “You might see a cohort of creators [in your feed] very consistently for three weeks, and then you don’t see them again for three months.”
Miss out on one too many trends, and risk missing out on a whole generation of potential fans, basically. “Constantly evolving with TikTok is just as much effort and work as if it was just to go away,” Bernstein said. It is Theseus’ social platform, changing every day to the point where, to the trained eye, it regularly looks like an entirely app.
But there’s a flipside to that issue, as well. TikTok’s democratization of virality has brought unprecedented opportunities to build new brands and develop new voices.
Overtime originally built its business on YouTube before expanding to Twitter and Instagram, all platforms that predated it. “We were a second- or third-mover in every other platform,” Overtime CEO Dan Porter said. “It is a testament to us and our willingness to grind that we built on platforms that we were the 5 millionth (adopter).”
Then came TikTok. Able to jump on it early, the company became the biggest sports account on the platform in July 2020. Its main account now has close to 25 million followers.
WWE is among the preexisting brands that quickly invested in the platform. With more than 23 million followers there, WWE has found it especially useful for building fan bases for its young superstars. Earlier this year, the company hired someone to focus solely on vertical video production.
When Savanah Alaniz joined the Savannah Bananas as an intern in June 2020, the baseball entertainment outfit had about 200 followers on TikTok. On the back of a string of viral videos, the brand now has close to 7 million (@MLB, for comparison, has 6.5 million followers). Less than a year after launching their own account, the Bananas’ “rival” Party Animals team has more than 1 million followers themselves.
“TikTok is just that platform for short content, and short content is just king right now,” Bananas creative coordinator Katelyn Scott said. “I literally never saw a full baseball game before I came here, but I saw the videos on TikTok, and I was like, ‘This is so fun.’”
In search of the next hit, Alaniz and Scott constantly think of new audience niches to target with on-field bits, like using Taylor Swift songs for run celebrations to get into Swifties’ feeds. Ideas are pitched to team owner Jesse Cole and others on a weekly basis. “We call it banana-fying trends,” Alaniz said.
Whatever platform emerges next will provide new opportunities for different brands to grow. So leaders are always on the lookout. “It would be a failure if there was a new hot social platform, and we weren’t first and outperforming,” Overtime chief content officer Marc Kohn said.
If and when that new service comes, another frenzy will be kicked off as sports social strategists figure out how they can stand out—and fast. But again, that’s just another Wednesday for them.
—Daniel Libit contributed reporting for this article
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