Since the adoption of social media professional athletes have positioned themselves as leading influencers in this emerging industry and a great way to connect and engage with fans is with custom Twitter shirts. The NBA has recently started selling official T-shirts that feature some of the league’s hottest stars’ Twitter handles above their jersey numbers, where their surnames would normally go. NBA players are among the most prolific tweeters and the league as a whole has been especially adept at leveraging social media. Players in every sport are incredibly active when it comes to tweeting so it’s only fitting to capitalize on this when it comes to merchandising.
While the NBA is the first league to officially make custom Twitter shirts, they’re not the first to have a version of the idea. TweetStarGame is a sports-meets-social site that has an online store selling cool Twitter handle shirts of players from a number of sports like the MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL.
Professional soccer and lacrosse teams have also replaced players’ names with their handles on official game uniforms. The wide world of sports is taking social to another level and I love it! Incorporating Twitter is another way of making athletes even more accessible to their fans and I think Twitter tee shirts is a genius marketing move.
Editor’s Note: Angel Soria is an Internet Marketing Consultant, entrepreneur, columnist for the Tulare Kings Hispanic Times, expert contributor for www.saltywaffle.com, and currently obtaining her Executive MBA at Fresno State. To learn more about custom Twitter shirts, visit www.fresnolocalinternetmarketing.com, click on the 25% coupon, then enter your name and email address in the boxes provided. Follow her @talk2angelsoria.