* Social networking has myriad upsides, few would disagree. And no journalist working on a national platform can expect that their work will pass without criticism. It’s never been quicker or easier for readers can make summary judgement, for good and ill – and many routinely hurl abuse. Getting that kind of feedback is par […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 11 June 2012 The chaotic way in which Blackburn Rovers has been run under the ownership of Venky’s is further exposed today by the revelation that transfer policy at the club in the past year has been partly informed by tips from fans via Facebook. […]

By Sportingintelligence 6 February 2012 In August 2010, as Facebook registered its 500 millionth active user, Sportingintelligence assessed the world’s ‘most popular’ sports teams by ‘Facebook fans’ – and Turkey’s Galatasaray came out on top. The ‘monetisation’ of sports fans via social media remains in its infancy. But in a rapidly changing multi-media world, we examined […]

THE SPORTS LAWYER is actually a posse of Britain’s brightest lawyers, from the Sport & Media team at the UK law firm, Thomas Eggar, who will be contributing features, analysis and insight on a regular basis on the key sports law issues of the day. In TSL’s latest column, Andrew Nixon discusses the risks associated with social media in […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 12 May 2011 Rio Ferdinand is closing in on a new Twitter landmark of one million followers, a milestone that will cement the Manchester United centre-half’s place as the most popular English footballer on the micro-blogging network. The 32-year-old England international is also the most […]

By Sportingintelligence 26 April 2011 So the battlefield of Twitter proved too much for Darron Gibson (reported here in Belfast among other places) but the race for tweeting supremacy continues apace between a group of other Manchester United footballers, and in turn between them and Piers Morgan. As our updated chart shows (below) Rio Ferdinand […]

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 24 April 2011 Wayne Rooney has apparently made his social networking debut on Twitter, with @wazzaroon08 amassing more than 135,000 followers in under 24 hours since Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand (@rioferdy5) recommended that his own followers follow ‘Wazza’. Ferdinand is a famous joker but club […]

By Pete Wilson 11 February 2011 Manchester United have become the world’s most popular team, as measured by fans on Facebook, the social networking site that has more than 600 million active users across more than 200 countries. United overtook Barcelona in the past few hours, and currently have more than 9.053m ‘fans’ against Barca’s […]

By Nick Harris 7 February 2011 Manchester United are set to overtake Barcelona as the world’s most popular football club at some point in the next week, according to data analysed by sportingintelligence from Facebook, which is effectively the biggest evolving opinion poll available. Remarkably, United only made their official entry into the land of […]

* . THE SPORTS LAWYER is actually a posse of Britain’s brightest lawyers, from the Sport & Media team at the UK law firm, Thomas Eggar, who will be contributing features, analysis and insight on a regular basis on the key sports law issues of the day. In TSL’s latest column, Andrew Nixon considers the […]