There’s no doubt that sports and social media are being mixed throughout the world. However, as some football players such as Rio Ferdinand and Emmanuel Frimpong have found out, you need to be careful how you use them, especially Twitter. Another one of the big social media sites, Facebook, said it’s going to keep experimenting by broadcasting live football games. However, it appears it’s just going to be with lower league teams for the time being, but that could change.
Budweiser, which sponsors FA Cup matches in England, showed a game live on Facebook last season and will be continuing that experiment this Sat. Aug. 11 with an FA Cup contest between Wembley FC and Langford, which is also going to be shown on television by ESPN. This means fans around the world will be able to tune in via Facebook if they choose.
Last year’s game attracted 1,149 supporters to the ground, while another 30,000 watched it online. Fans just watched it via an application on Budweiser’s American Facebook page. As well as showing the game, ESPN will also be doing a documentary series on Wembley FC.
Budweiser recruited some former internationals to join Wembley by signing on David Seaman as the goalkeeping coach as well as players Martin Keown, Graeme Le Saux, Ray Parlour, Claudio Caniggia, and Brian McBride. Terry Venables is the team’s technical director.
It’ll be interesting to see how far Facebook can go with their streaming of games considering the complicated broadcasting rights for football matches, especially if Wembley made it through to later rounds and met a Premier League club.
