Franky Benítez

So, first of all, we would like to thank The NFL PR Office for responding to our recent post Join the Twitter Uses Ban on thr NFL. It was a classy act, and we truly appreciate the back and forth. We would like to share the two comments that @nflprguy has shared as a way to clarify recent reports about the NFL’s social media policy when it comes to “twittercasting” of games.

Comment 1 (posted earlier today on our site)
“Perhaps i can clarify here for you re: NFL and fans on Twitter during gameday. I work in the NFL’s communications department and enjoy talking NFL on Twitter (@nflprguy).

We want people to tweet during games (as they did for the 65 preseason games so far). The only thing we (meaning our lawyers) would object to is someone trying to create play-by-play of the game with a literal description of every single play like:

1st and 10 on Ravens 20

Flacco hand off to Rice, tackle by Polamalu, 2yrd loss

2nd and 12 on Ravens 18

Flacco mishandles snap, loss of 2

3rd and 14 on Ravens 16

And so on…. (that’s 5 tweets by the way)

With an average of 150 plays per game, we’re talking nearly 60 tweets from the same person per hour. One tweet a minute for 3 hours. (on a personal note, I’m unfollowing someone who does that.)

The league has rights to the play-by-play accounts (cue the voiceover you hear during every sporting event …. Without the written consent of the NFL, etc.).

We’ve never went after a fan legally or remotely come close to suing for trying to do play by play on his blog/website. Nor do we expect on Twiter.

We’ve embraced Twitter and love watching/reading people tweet about games in progress. It’s like being in a sports bar. Tweet about great plays, tweet about other games, tweet about the announcers.”

Comment 2: Posted after I offered several questions and suggestions
“I’m not sure why you are confused. Tweet during the game, just as people have throughout the preseason, including myself. we’d ask that people just don’t tweet the literal description of play-by-play of every play as i described in the other comment.

we are not monitoring fan Twitter sites as someone suggested. as far as people who aren’t watching the game, they can go to nfl.com for the play-by-play of every single game.

by the way, u calling one friend and telling the score is quite different than you publicly doing play-by-play on your twitter page which is seen by 5,286 and growing followers.”

What are you thoughts? We have posted ours already in the earlier Join the Twitter Uses Ban on thr NFL, but want to hear from you.