Digital Media Cafe Blog 10th November: Featuring Mario Balotelli, Tinder, WTA, Arsenal, Real Madrid and Red Bull Racing – David Granger

Following their Italian striker once again hitting the headlines for a social media faux pas, Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre has said it’s a problem, but did stop short of saying he’d like it banned.

Ayre told BBC Radio 5 live’s Sportsweek he would love to keep all his players away from social media and that Liverpool are doing everything possible to educate their players.

There will at some stage come a breaking point where players, who Ayre says have too much time on their hands and whose skill lies in playing football rather than social media marketing, make more than just a post in poor taste.

Liverpool already have in place a very stringent policy which all of its players must sign – as do other sporting teams – but at Anfield, Ayre says, if they step out of line then they will be punished Let’s hope they’re taking note.

Swipe Right? The Mascot On Tinder

While Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Snapchat are becoming the norm for sporting teams, there can be few who have their own Tinder account.

For those who don’t know – or are telling their better halves they don’t – Tinder is a dating app which finds potential matches close to where you are.

Swipe right to like or left to pass. If someone likes you back, it’s a match.

So not really sporting territory. But the University of Oregon has put its mascot, a Duck on Tinder – and winner got a date with said mascot at a women’s volleyball game for her and three friends.

Cheap? Perhaps. Cheesy? Definitely, but it means a university team in the US is grabbing marketing headlines all over the world. That’s the power of a clever way of using a dating app.

Game, Set and App: Big Data In Tennis

From next year we could have in-game coaching in tennis using data collected and processed in real-time. SAP has developed a program for the Women’s Tennis Association and it’s set to make its debut at the Brisbane Invitational tournament in Australia.

The app powered by a tablet means coaches can see what’s happening on court in terms of aces, double faults, first-serve percentages and adjust their player’s game accordingly.

The women’s game already allows on-court coaching and has done since 2008. But this app and the data on it takes things to a whole new level.

But does this take all the individual effort out of tennis? The men’s game thinks so and has no plans to introduce either the app, or on-court coaching.

As one veteran said: “Tennis is unique, in not having contact with your coach during a match. It teaches so many things about how to play sport, and how to get out of trouble on your own, and that makes tennis very special.”

News and Views: The Week’s Round-up

We finish with two pieces of news.

The first is that Real Madrid is the biggest football team on Twitter according to the latest numbers. FC Barcelona is second with both boasting a following of more than 13 million followers, while there’s a fair drop in that number to third spot, held by Arsenal with their nearly five million. Here is a link to the rest of the list.

And finally there’s the sickening news of the ram raiders who stole more than 60 trophies which the Formula One team had acquired over their ten years of existence.

Not usually a story here for us at the Digital Café, except for the hashtag which is being employed in the hope that it will push someone with either information or a conscience to come forward.

Clearly while the trophies have massive sentimental worth, they are of little intrinsic value – so the hastag #findourtrophies has been launched in the hope of getting them back in the cabinets where they belong in Milton Keynes.

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Having spent eight seasons in Formula One managing the digital channels for world champions Red Bull Racing, David Granger now runs Fact 51, a social and digital content agency.

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