Social Media is the way in which sporting organisations are connecting most directly with their fans.
The financial value of the medium has yet to be fully determined but sports bodies, clubs and players around the world are using it to build their brand and create financial value around performances and events.
How are the clubs within the Airtricity Premier League faring then when it comes to using twitter and facebook to promote themselves?
Sign in or sign up for a free trial to discover the first League table of the new season…

[ismember]The first thing to not is that clubs have stepped up their activity over the past twelve months, particularly in the faster moving and more immediate environment of twitter.
Shamrock Rovers still lead the way having increased their followers from 5,620 to 8,306 despite a season of under performance on the field of play.  They are being chased down in social media though by Cork City who now stand at 6,793 from 3539 at the start of the 2012 season, reigning champions Sligo Rovers who climbed from 2,973 to 6,195 followers and Derry City who are the fourth club to top 5,000 with a figure of 5,233 up from 2,798.
Dundalk (3,793), St Pat’s (3,340), Drogheda (2,682) and newly promoted Limerick City (2,434) fill the mid table positions in the Twitter League table with Drogheda having shown the biggest improvement rising almost five fold after stepping up the activity on the service from an inactive 90 tweets twelve months ago to a respectable 2,746 on the eve of the new season.
The bottom four in social media terms may not stay there for long as all four of them are within the greater Dublin area and should have the greatest viral capacity to reach out to existing and new audiences through mobile.
Bohemians (2,268), Shelbourne (2,109), and Bray Wanderers (1,924) all have sponsorship deals with Volkswagen dealerships and might be able to learn something from how Sligo Rovers manage their twitter stream to much better effect.
It could be one of the many possible side benefits of having related sponsorship arrangements and is an area that is worth exploring.
UCD sits at the bottom of the twitter league with an audience of 1,676 but at least it is moving in the right direction having doubled over the past 12 months.  A good start to the season and some activity designed to be shared could see the student population adopt the club on their own campus as a social media favourite and may serve as a pet project for some of those studying commerce or related courses.
There is little to be gained from a comparison of domestic soccer clubs to the giants of European soccer but maybe more so in looking at clubs towards the head of the different English leagues.
Cardiff City (32,530 followers) sit atop the Championship while Doncaster Rovers (12,406) are leading League One.  The comparison becomes closer in League Two where leaders Gillingham (6,823 followers) would be behind Shamrock Rovers and only marginally ahead of Cork City.[/ismember]
In the Sport for Business Daily Digest today we linked through to an excellent review of the MIT Sports Analytics Conference that took place over the first weekend in March.  The convergence of data, social media and sport is one which will undoubtedly become a major revenue stream over the coming 12-24 months.
Airtricity Premier League clubs have shown they are capable of drawing an audience but still need to work harder in order to gain that reward.