The latest thing I’d wanted to blog about was the recent incident where Andrew Symonds again found himself in hot water for getting into an altercation with a hotel patron in Brisbane, after only just returning to the Australian cricket team after an enforced layoff.

Typically the mainstream media reported it, and the incident made front page news in several newspapers and online news sites. Of course opinions were written about whether Symonds should be allowed to stay in the game, and there was the usual examination of any issue like this.

Twenty four hours later it was reported that Symonds’ version of events, in which he was the victim of the incident, was found to have been what actually happened and as of today Symonds is still playing cricket for the Australian team.

What’s interesting to think about here is how professional sporting organisations like Cricket Australia, which seemingly spend more time on image management than anything else would have approached the incident if it had occurred in a landscape dominated by social media.

Imagine if people started ‘twittering’ or blogging about what allegedly took place at the hotel. (E.g. Aussiecricketlover Just seen Symonds hit a bloke for six, no cricket bat involved #cricket).

How would Cricket Australia respond? Would they twitter back? (E.g. CricketAustralia investigating Symonds incident and will let you know shortly). Without the thousands of words of copy and countless hours of television coverage of the Symonds incident at their disposal, would they be able to repair the damage to Symonds’ reputation as readily?

This is something that sporting organisations have to consider as social media outlets like Twitter become more prevalent. Considering that Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull both ‘tweet’, it is becoming a powerful communication tool. But because professional sporting organisations are unique, in that it isn’t just about getting a message out but also maintaining an image, it becomes trickier for them. The next phase of my research is going to look at what strategies they might use to negotiate this.

It would appear that the AFL has advised players not to read fan websites, for fear that the vicious player appraisals could lead to depressions, according to the Herald Sun.

You can read the article for yourselves, but it certainly seems that the AFL is doing nothing to build up a relationship with sports fans who are citizen media makers. It would also seem that the AFL is not very well read on emerging forms of media, as the article is quite clearly referring to people who post on forums, considering at one point that it talks about users stealing the identities of players. As pretty much anyone who uses the Internet would know, the interactions and behaviours within a forum are totally different to those found within a blog.

However on the plus side for sports fans, it does show that they have gained some power through social media, with even the always busy AFL coaches being familiar with fan sites like Big Footy and the ‘viscious cyber-bullying’ that is found within them.

It’s obvious though that the AFL doesn’t see the value in sports fans who are citizen media makers, with the article at one point quoting an AFL official, Pippa Grange, who described them as people ‘with not much better to do’.

New Media Mogul always considered that the AFL would be one of the more progressive sporting organisations when it came to dealing with new media issues, so it is disappointing to see that they have about as much interest in social media, as as much understanding of the potential of the medium as the other sporting organisations covered recently. The International Olympic Committee, with its extremely censored Beijing blogs, is now starting to look quite progressive in its use and encouragement of social media.

New Media Mogul has already featured numerous example of this but the latest comes from cricket’s Indian Premier League, as the tournament has banned news organisations the event from supplying photos to their own websites or the websites of any other organizations. Tcovering his would appear to be because they want all traffic looking for photos of the event to come to their own website and view them, where the photos are also offered for sale. Consumers can purchase a single, extremely high resoultion photo for $199 and by the looks of it download the photo and have it printed out or whatever else they may desire.

The point about this practice is that media sharing seems to be a way to encourage fan interaction with a sport in this new media age, and so making any media surrounding the sport exclusive to one particular site on the one hand, and then so expensive to obtain on the other hand seems to have turned fans away from the IPL, at least in an online sense.

For a tournament that was so hyped and so talked about amongst cricketing fans the world over, to date the league’s ‘fan page’ on Facebook has only managed to secure 713 people and the paucity of media available on this page is telling, with only 9 fan pictures contributed. In comparison, one of the AFL’s most popular teams, the Collingwood Football Club has 3,695 fans and in addition to this 91 fan pictures have been contributed.

IPL is doing better on other social media sites with 243 results found on Flickr, although many of these seem to be team logos and screen shots, so they don’t count as genuine contributions of fan media. Likewise on YouTube there is plenty of media, but once again much has been repurposed from television and is not genuine fan contribution.

It has been reported that attendances at the matches are not what organisers of the tournament expected, with many tickets having to be given away to ensure that games have sufficient spectators. So it is unclear how large a part the decision to make all media content surrounding the tournament exclusive to the IPL’s website; thus ensuring that the enthusiasm that fan made media brings to an event is somewhat diminished; has impacted on this lack of attendance. But it is becoming increasingly clear that fan culture as displayed through social media is becoming an important element to the success of sport, and in particular media sport.

In a sign of the changing times, Swimming Australia has taken the step of warning its athletes that images they post to their Facebook pages are effectively in the public domain and they should be careful with the types of images they upload. The need for this warning has risen after swimmer Stephanie Rice, and her fiancee, fellow swimmer Eamon Sullivan were depicted as a ‘hot cop’ and a sumo wrestler while attending a dress-up party. These photos were uploaded to Rice’s Facebook page and have now found their way into the mainstream media. If you haven’t seen them already, check them out here, courtesy of The Daily Telegraph.

While it is understandable that Swimming Australia does not want their swimmers presented in a negative light, and wants a clean cut image for its swimming team, nobody was doing anything wrong here. While the photos of Stephanie might take on certain sexual connotations, she is simply a girl who is having fun at a party. And if people see these photos and find her sexy, is that really such a bad thing?

It seems that Swimming Australia has failed to understand the opportunities that are on offer here. Every sport needs personalities – people who transcend the sport, and boost ticket sales because punters turn up to see these people perform. Swimming has had a history of ‘pinups’ – Keiran Perkins, Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Susie O’Neill and Gian Rooney to name a few. But with the exception of Hackett, these people have all retired and swimming needs to unearth some new personalities to ensure that the sport remains popular.

The other point is that most of these swimmers have carefully manufactured media profiles, with carefully selected exposure to mainstream media texts. But consumers are no longer buying this the way they were five years ago – these days they want to see real people with real personalities.

Stephanie Rice is a real person with an appealing personality, and the photos that have found their way into the mainstream media demonstrate that. Swimming Australia should not be afraid to let swimmers with personalities such as this emerge on the new media landscape of Facebook and other user-generated content sites. In this era of viral marketing, it is possible for athletes like Stephanie to attain a media profile without spending a cent.

This type of marketing appeals to the voyeuristic element that is creeping into media – spawning reality TV shows such as the latest big hit, So You Think You Can Dance. Swimming Australia could give their swimmers the freedom to use social media sites in whatever way they consider appropriate, and see new stars emerge within this medium to keep swimming as one of Australia’s premier sports.