Before the Atlanta Hawks defeated the Brooklyn Nets in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, they tried something that hadn’t been done before. Seven months after Twitter allowed products to be bought from a tweet, they offered a limited number of playoff tickets for Game 2 of the Eastern Conference match-up to be directly purchased by fans via Twitter. With the tap of a tweet, fans selected tickets and paid with a credit card without even leaving Twitter.
As social media and sports continue to collide, Twitter has been one of the most used platforms to get news about favorite professional teams. This may include player reports, game updates, highlights, live play-by-play commentary and of course, game scores. And although it may not be the same as being at a game, it’s the next best thing in terms of staying on top of the action.
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That was until the Hawks decided to use social media as a new platform to sell tickets online. However, that raised a very interesting question, if an NBA team can create this new way to sell tickets on Twitter, what other ways can a team sell playoffs tickets via Twitter?
As we all know, everything that happens whether it’d be good or bad, always somehow manages to find its way online. We live in today’s “meme-age” of the internet. With the help of Vine and other editing apps people use to edit content, photos and videos are always made into funny memes that the world can sit back, get a laugh at and share to other friends. With NBA Playoff tickets being so hard to purchase as they tend to sell out quickly, NBA teams could use this platform to their advantage to get more of their fans interested in buying tickets. A team could hold a limited number of tickets for sale (like Atlanta did for Game 2) and create a contest for fans to create the funniest meme or video on Twitter with a prize of being able to purchase tickets for the playoffs. This could create a lot of digital buzz for teams and get fans highly involved for a chance of seeing their team play in the playoffs.
We just made a limited number of Game 2 tickets available for $45. Get them exclusively on Twitter: https://t.co/e5KnyZL2zj
— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) April 20, 2015
Another way a team could sell tickets via Twitter is by allowing fans to participate in a team’s history lesson. As we all know, sports fans take a serious sense of pride in knowing about their team’s history. An NBA team could hold different sets of competitive, historic contests, giving fans of all ages the opportunity to show off their basketball knowledge. This would create a new way to buy tickets for the playoffs, that may be sold out already. The key here would be fan interaction, because whether or not they buy tickets, fans are participating and creating a new buzz on Twitter that could create the next possible trending topic for future promotions. Just don’t forget to hashtag.
Lastly, we’ve seen teams create scavenger hunts for fans to find and win mysterious prizes. How about a team creating a scavenger hunt on Twitter for fans to buy sold out playoff tickets? Here’s what they can do: post a picture of clues where the tickets are hidden around the city. It may be next to a certain building, restaurant, etc. The higher prices the tickets are worth, the harder they will be to find. This would be exciting to watch as fans would engage in winning tickets and marketing teams would create new ways of using social media to draw in more fans.
So those are just three new ways NBA teams can use Twitter to sell playoff tickets while getting fans more involved in the playoffs. The Atlanta Hawks paved the way to selling tickets with the click of a tweet and clearly there are many opportunities for teams to follow their lead and get creative with selling tickets on this platform.
With Twitter enabling “buy” buttons, we have likely just seen the beginning of what is to come with the power of social networks tying in with a team’s business model to make revenue.