This is just another step in the league’s absurd stance on social media. We get the thought process behind it: they want to be in control of the social media highlights. But that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
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People want to easily share highlights, and share as many highlights as they can. The way the NFL conducts social media makes it nearly impossible to do without stealing the content. You can’t embed their YouTube videos on sites, you can’t embed videos on their website and you can’t embed their Twitter highlights without it linking out.
The league makes it near impossible to share content, but for what reason? Why make it harder?
Look at the NBA, and what they’ve done. The Wall Street Journal spoke with commissioner Adam Silver last year, and he put it perfectly when he said, “It is completely beyond our hands, but at the same time, we can help facilitate it.”
The NBA embraces the social media culture, and it shows. They make their highlights easily accessible, and allow teams to create videos without punishing them for doing so. And guess what? Ratings improved for ABC and ESPN, including the most-watched NBA Finals in 18 years.
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Meanwhile, NFL ratings are dropping, and the league somehow thinks eliminating highlights from social media will improve that. But read what Silver told The Wall Street Journal about how he thinks that’s the wrong strategy.
“If someone’s tweeting that, for example, ‘Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins, you got to check them out, they’re on right now playing San Antonio,’ it’s click — instantaneous. For $6.99, you now buy that game — it’s yours.”
Maybe in time the league will catch up to how the world works on social media, but for now, they just come off as silly.
