The rise of digital content creation in sports allows fans to connect with their favorite teams and athletes like never before.
For decades, sports fans have watched college and professional athletes from afar, knowing their favorite players on TV screens or being the lucky fan who got a high-five when the team stepped off the bus.
Since the beginning and constant rise of social media, those days are over.
A social media presence is essential for any kind of business, and even more so for sports. Your social media team should be ready to post whenever something newsworthy happens in the world of sports.
In a highly competitive and rapidly growing market, sports organizations continue to employ large numbers of digital content creators.
One of the creators is Josie Sandquist, a WSU broadcast journalism major and WSU football player. creative video internSandquist said WSU’s media team has grown over the past few years.
“Until about a year ago, WSU didn’t have a media team,” says Sandquist. “Before, there were only three. Now there are twelve.”
Sandquist said he sees sports media growing in the future by allowing fans to see different sides of athletes.
“Seeing how they act in action is what fans want to see. There are many clips of guys dancing and joking during practice,” Sandquist said. “People forget that they are also college students.”
Sandquist said her upbringing, which coincided with the rise of social media, gave her generation an unconventional background and expertise in content creation. This upbringing has removed many barriers to entry into the content creation space.
It is debatable whether the rise of social media and thus bridging the gap between players and fans has had a positive or negative impact on the world of sports.
Yet social media continues to change the way the general public interacts with athletes.
“People see [athletes] Almost on a godlike level,” says Jonah Ward, a 21-year-old graphic designer and senior business management major at George Mason University.
In addition to his research, Ward GMU bar stool social media accounts and his graphic page, dubia design.
Ward said social media interactions between athletes, graphic designers and fans create an environment that humanizes the athletes.
March In 2022, Denver Broncos wide receiver Jerry Jeudy reshared one of Ward’s design on his Instagram story.
“I thought it was insane, but remember that there are real people behind the screen,” Ward says.
Like many others in the digital content creation space, Ward had an unconventional introduction to social media management and graphic design.
Ward began his digital content creation career at the age of 15, launching a New England Patriots fan page that has grown to 10,000 followers on Instagram. Ward says the page and its community inspired him to start creating graphics.
Like Ward, Sandquist was interested in creating content at an early age and started a YouTube channel in fourth grade.
Another creator with a nontraditional background in the field of graphic design is Cyr.
Cyr is a 20-year-old graphic designer and high school football coach at Henry Abbott Technical High School. He works for his EA Sports Madden Football, sports design page.
Cyr started designing graphics when his brother started attending Abbott Tech, which offers digital art classes.
By creating his own content on Instagram, Cyr connected with players from his favorite team, the New York Giants.
Since then, Cyr has spawned a product collaboration with Giants cornerback Darnay Holmes, growing the account’s followers from 2,000 to 22,000 in just three years.
Cyr wants the public to know how much effort goes into creating content.
“You can tell when the trade happened and the organization rushed the jersey exchange edit,” says Cyr.
Each edit or jersey change takes 2-4 hours, depending on the jersey you’re using and the angle of the photo.
Cyr says that in today’s world, designers can create portfolios without a college degree.
Digital content creators such as Cyr, Sandquist and Ward continue to prove how people can work in fields they want, regardless of background.