The WTA Tour and Sony Ericsson jointly announced today the launch of SuperFans (www.WTASuperFans.com) – a groundbreaking social media channel that will live online across the Tour, player, tournament and Sony Ericsson digital and mobile platforms and will become the destination for women’s tennis fans across the globe to get closer than ever before to players.
Harnessing the power of social media and the enormous worldwide popularity of Tour stars – some of the most followed athletes on Facebook™ and Twitter™ – SuperFans will enable women’s tennis to become the most accessible and fan friendly sport in the world by bringing together into a single hub all of the social media channel conversations and content produced by its players.
“The social media revolution has enabled professional athletes like myself to have a more meaningful two-way dialogue with fans,” said Maria Sharapova, the most followed female athlete in the world. “I love the SuperFans concept, as it makes it easy for fans of women’s tennis to hear from us and talk to us.”
The SuperFans initiative marks the first time that a major sports league has endorsed, promoted and aggregated the social media channels of its athletes, enabling fans to communicate with players on a deeper and more personal level. The Tour’s top social networkers – Venus Williams, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova – have close to 5 million combined followers on the internet.
The SuperFans platform will give fans unprecedented insight into the lives of players, on and off the court, providing a single destination for real-time aggregated and consolidated social media feeds, such as Twitter and Facebook.
Fans can either look through all player updates or filter their view by a group or an individual. Any videos and images that the players attach to their social media updates through channels such as YouTube™ and Flickr™ will also appear on the SuperFans site.
Additionally, through SuperFans, players will have the opportunity to interact with each other and tag each other in photos, enriching the dynamic platform. The Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10 mobile phone will be used by players to create photo, video and text content for SuperFans. Also, SuperFans will provide fans with a live tournament experience at select Tour events, offering tickets to their favorite stars’ most important matches through a series of competitions.
Promotion of the SuperFans program will be supported through a series of viral videos focused on players, filmed during the Sony Ericsson Open and set to be released in late April.
Hey V, good luck on your Semifinal match on Key Biscayne.