Watch or listen to episode 318 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast in which Neil chatted with Alex Silverman, Reporter for Sports Business Journal covering hockey and soccer business.
Alex discusses why 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for both hockey and soccer in the US — from the NHL’s push to develop its next generation of stars and the excitement around the World Cup this summer to MLS navigating its calendar to align more with the global football calendar. He also shares his perspective on where each league stands in the broader American sports media landscape, and what it will take for both to capitalize on the moment.
On episode 317 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Jaelyn Arndt, Associate Director of Communications – Social Media for the NCAA.
The NCAA has been around since 1906. Social media has not. Bridging that gap, and doing so across 1,100+ schools, three very different divisions, and more than half a million student-athletes who come and go every year, is a unique challenge for Jaelyn Arndt and her team.
The NCAA has a broad mission, encompassing the support of countless past, present, and future student-athletes. And social media is undeniably one of the most powerful tools in the quiver now — but it’s only impactful if wielded to the fullest extent, efficiently and effectively. So how do you help usher a century-old institution into the social media age? Start with the basics.
“We have evolved and we’re being social on social, we’re doing best practices,” said Arndt, a former NCAA Division III volleyball player in her days as a student-athlete. “We have really dove into each platform, but now we are maturing in the way of that maybe not every piece of content needs to hit every platform. Or hey, if we’re going to post on Instagram but we also need it on Facebook, we’re building that content for the platform. So it may not be the same piece of media, but it’s the same story because we know what works on each platform. And I think that just came with maturity. It came with having boundaries and being able to say no, being able to say yes.”
Developing platform-specific packaging and approaches was step one. As Arndt noted, too, getting the NCAA to be more thoughtful about content production and distribution was an integral step; she added later that the organization has a lot of room to grow on TikTok, for example, but needs to dedicate the appropriate time and effort there to make sure they do it right. Alongside getting the content right, there’s the ever-important voice and tone.
In the earliest days of social media, voice, most often conveyed in copy, was mostly staid; then, through memes, GIFs, replies, and just pure content vibes, which gave way to eras of snark, absurdity, and everything in between. The NCAA has to be thoughtful, but intentional; careful but convicted. Arndt and her team appreciate the challenge of speaking and posting on behalf of an organization that wants to celebrate the joy and inspiration of college sports and student-athletes, but also leave room for straightforward and serious explanations of the rules and regulations the NCAA oversees and communicates. Arndt described the NCAA’s voice and presence on social.
“We kind of gave ourselves a character of the proud auntie,” said Arndt, who said the strategy is centered around ‘cultivating community.’ “So the NCAA is here to uplift you, support you. We are your biggest cheerleaders, but we’re also going to keep it real with you when there are new rules or new legislation that passes.
“We’re going to not talk at you, we’re talking with you. And those are things that come from comments. It’s engaging with the student athletes. It’s sharing their content. It’s doing social first. It’s being able to take a structured in-venue video and then creating a social-first piece that’s going to hit with our target audience, which is always the student athletes.”
As the NCAA has been molding its social media strategy, a massive college athletics media complex has continued to grow. Schools, as well as student-athletes themselves, are telling their own stories and creating their own content — and lots of it. Let alone all of the players in the larger media ecosystem, ESPN, Yahoo, Bleacher Report, FOX Sports, The Athletic, and tons of others. So where does that leave the NCAA? In an ocean of content, where and when should the NCAA surface?
“Where we sit, it’s really being strategic because we have access to footage that not everybody else does,” said Arndt, who also spoke about being mindful of covering and amplifying stories across all three divisions and across all sports, as much as possible. “Especially if someone has already been at a championship or we have all this footage that hasn’t even seen the light of day. So that’s a really easy way for us to come in on the story with our assets that no one else has.”
Arndt also spoke about this approach as it pertains to the biggest annual NCAA properties: men’s and women’s March Madness.
“You have to take advantage of where your credential gets you because these are our championships. We have the access and everyone is already seeing where the ESPN camera is, but are you back-of-house or are you getting locker room? Are you getting the legacy court drop? Where can we be that not everybody else can see? And that’s where you’re going to have those breakthrough moments.”
The NCAA can also come at stories with a unique lens. Because while most media outlets will skew toward athletic feats and storylines, the NCAA has a bigger picture frame and more diverse content buckets. As much focus as there is on the incredible achievements in pools, arenas, and stadiums (and the NCAA elevates those stories, too), the student-athlete experience is unique. The NCAA seeks to capture that, always ready with the story and the next level or two beyond, too.
“It’s a lot — you have to be knowledgeable of this story or this athlete,” Arndt explained. “Were they at a national championship? Do they hold an NCAA record? Were they a Woman of the Year or an elite scholar? Any awards that we give out, that’s kind of where we can chime in with our own storytelling effort, if ESPN or someone else jumped in there.
Arndt continued: “For us, it’s really about diversifying the feeds, getting different stories out there that hit different pillars for us. And then to me, it’s using our platforms to help continue to build the student athletes’ brands. You see these people and their amazing stories, and they’re trying to build out their followers. A lot of these athletes don’t become professional athletes, and so if they want to talk about what they want to do post-sport — yeah, let’s get that on our account because I’m sure someone here would love to hire you after you graduate.”
It always comes back to the student-athletes. They’re the main characters in these stories; they’re the humans whose achievements get immortalized in highlights and headlines, and whose emotions fans can’t help but feel viscerally and vicariously. So, one of the most important jobs for Arndt and her team with the NCAA is to study up on the student-athletes. They have to know about the stories out there worth telling, who could fit a certain structure or category that’ll resonate with fans and followers, and how best to work with the student-athletes who find themselves in the spotlight.
“Pre-production and research will always be your best friend, and I think people sleep on that a little bit in the social space,” said Arndt, who has been with the NCAA since 2022. “There’s just so much that goes into it. If you do your research on an athlete, you’re going to know which one is a social person and who’s not. So when you’re reaching out to make the ask to do a ‘get ready with me,’ I would hope you did your research, and you find that this person has done a ‘get ready with me’ once a week for the past five months, and you’re like, that’s the best candidate.”
The dedication to research and preparation came to a head in early 2026, as the NCAA had the opportunity to travel to Italy to work the Olympics and Paralympics, which were chock full of current and former NCAA student-athletes. The operation in Milan was a great microcosm of how the NCAA serves its mission, its members, and its past, present, and future student-athletes. Arndt described what the NCAA sought to do in Italy and the incredible output and success they were able to send and bring back home.
“Our goal was to, one, create content for the membership and conferences, schools back home,” said Arndt, who expressed excitement and anticipation about what the NCAA will be able to do when the Olympic Games come to LA in 2028. “So we would ask questions, upload it to a Google Drive, send an email out, notify them, and then [schools and conferences] could create, edit whatever content we got and post on their accounts. Second was creating content for the NCAA channels. And that was a huge success. We got to sit down with 63 athletes who came through and do interviews with them. It was literally insane.
Arndt elaborated further: “Diving into all of their stories, we made combo pieces, personality pieces. But it’s unreal to think about. For us, it’s really telling the pipeline of the Olympic athletes that start at the NCAA. Winter Games is fun because you have athletes who were track and field or a swimmer, and now they’re on the Team USA bobsled team. And you’re like, how in the world did you end up here? Tell us about that.”
The NCAA has been dealing with changes for generations. The internet gave way to social media, giving all schools and student-athletes a platform. NIL augmented the already-growing student-athlete brands. The NCAA had to adapt, pick up new tools, develop modern approaches, and figure out how to keep making an impact — for the student-athletes who compete and the fans who live and die with their schools. It’s an ongoing evolution that Arndt continues to shepherd today.
But even amidst all the billions in media rights deals and the millions in NIL deals and revenue sharing, there remains a special purity in college athletics. And yet, with all the humanizing stories and lifestyle content pieces in pro sports, it’s still hard to see ourselves in those larger-than-life athletes. But with student-athletes, it’s never been only about sports. For four years, they earn the admiration and attention of fans, but it’s just a short time in their lives and one part of their story. Arndt and her team will continue to showcase all of it. They’ll be the proud auntie cheering on the student-athletes, making the most of those years on campus. While for each of them, their time as a collegiate athlete is but a short chapter in their lives, their stories can inspire and have an impact forever.
Watch or listen to episode 317 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast in which Neil chatted with Jaelyn Arndt, Associate Director of Communications – Social Media for the NCAA.
Jaelyn discusses the NCAA’s social media strategy and how she and her team are building and evolving the brand across platforms. She breaks down the NCAA’s brand voice, the challenge and opportunity of storytelling across all three divisions, what she looks for when hiring for social media roles, how she approaches measuring success beyond the traditional metrics, and what goes into covering marquee moments like March Madness.
Comprehensive insights into the San Diego Mojo volleyball match, covering fan engagement, venue setup, merchandise, player interactions, and in-game entertainment at Viejas Arena in March 2026.
Geoff discusses the strategic blueprint for building a lasting sports organization, sharing insights from his work across 104 countries around the world, including consulting work with FIFA, UEFA, FIBA, Sport England, Irish Football, and more. He breaks down the “Fans vs. Guests” philosophy, the importance of a team’s values and brand, the critical role of grassroots development, and why the most successful teams prioritize product and community.
Sure, the competition and the games are the vehicle; highlights drive reach and engagement, the best in the world at their sport putting on a show.
But the modern-day nature of social media allows for more. Modern-day fandom demands more. It’s not enough to just cheer on laundry and stitched-on jersey numbers. When you feel like you know the athletes, then it’s not just watching elite athletes compete live; it’s more akin to watching a friend or family member do their thing. The power of parasocial relationships in action.
The most successful leagues, teams, and athletes are working to develop such relationships with fans; there’s a premium added to every game and play when fans are cheering on players who feel like friends. Paige Y. Price, MPS is among the wave of team social media creators charged with not just promoting ticket sales and driving engagement, but fostering such meaningful connections between players and fans. Working with the Washington Spirit of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), Price has seen simple and playful bits like asking Spirit players a ‘question of the day’ upon their arrival, playing rock-paper-scissors, or autographing photos of themselves as young kids drive the kind of engagement that transcends performance on the pitch. For Price, it requires a thoughtful and open approach with players.
“I always told them, you never have to answer the question for me. Like, if you don’t want to, if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, you don’t have to, because I know there’s a select group of girls that I can always count on that will,” said Price, who has been in her role with the Washington Spirit since early 2024 (her second stint with the team). “Obviously, they didn’t know me at the time, so they were a little — not hesitant but just kind of aware that I’m a new person — and feeling me out, I’m feeling them out, too. And I took my surveys from that, and then also my mental surveys from that, and as I got to know them. And I did have a lot of help from Amie and Cecily (from social media production company Hat Trip, which works with the NWSL), who hired me, just letting me in on certain player personalities.
“But it’s also reading body language and reading the room…[Also], I think trying to get to know them outside of soccer, like if we have just the slightest bit of anything in common…trying to have those small things in common that can help me engage in conversation with them that doesn’t involve work for either of us; I think that was huge as well…”
Building such relationships and producing group participation-style content helps every player (who wants to) get some screen time and a chance for fans to get to know them. But the Spirit also happen to have arguably the most well-known individual women’s soccer player in the world, Trinity Rodman, on their roster, and she was at the center of one of the biggest sports stories in the world earlier this year.
Having a collaborative, friendly relationship with players pays off in the day-to-day and certainly in the big moments. So when Rodman signed her new deal to remain in the NWSL with the Spirit, enabled by a rule change by the league that helped the Spirit approach the money she’d have on the table with European clubs, the effort to roll out a meaningful announcement to match the moment involved teamwork. The result was an authentic, effective, well-thought-out series of posts and productions that met the moment.
“Trinity was pretty hands-on in the content creation,” said Price, who also described the posting plan for her, Trinity, and the team, planned with precision. “A lot of it was her vision; [for] the video that she posted on her channel before we went live with our video, she was sending edits back and forth and was like, ‘This is the kind of feel that I want it to have.’ So it was a lot of fan interaction because we know that she spends a lot of time interacting with fans after games. That’s how she wanted it to look. And we were able to deliver.”
A lot of the Spirit’s best-performing content includes Trinity Rodman (shocker, I know!). But while including Rodman in every post and video may juice engagement, Price told me she’s cognizant of ensuring fans get to know every player on the team. Every player has a chance to be someone’s favorite player. This is a challenge every team faces, amplified by national media and marketing campaigns that often center around just a few star players.
Including players beyond Spirit stars like Rodman and Croix Bethune, among others, is no act of charity, however — it’s smart strategy. Sports leagues are so diverse nowadays, and the NWSL is no exception, boasting some of the best players in the world from countries around the world. Diversifying players in content helps diversify the appeal for fans, giving new and casual fans more avenues toward avidity. Price explained her thought process around varying the players who feature in the team’s content.
“If there’s a player that I’m looking through our feed and I’m like, we haven’t really seen them in a little bit, let me do something. The question of the day is our big thing for that,” she said. “You get to see everybody, and you get to hear from everybody, so I really like to do questions of the day for that purpose…Especially because we have international players. I don’t speak Spanish super well, but yeah, I never want anybody to feel excluded, so I always offer it up.
“And when I notice that we’re getting a little heavy [on certain players]… there are other people on our team that are like, oh, we haven’t posted this person in a while, let’s give them a little shout, let’s put them first in this carousel of photos, instead of either not including them or putting them at the back and putting Trinity in the front. Because, as special and as wonderful as Trinity is, we have other players on the team, and she knows that and she respects that. And, she has said, she loves her team so much, and we love the team as well. And we want to highlight the entire team, not just our star girls.”
There’s something else that’s been happening with Price and the Spirit, as well as her counterparts at other teams throughout sports, which greatly enhances that sense of relatability for fans with the players — Price herself is a minor character in the content. When the athletes play rock-paper-scissors, it’s Price’s hand they’re playing against. When players answer the question of the day, they’re often speaking to her, not staring into the abyss of a camera lens. There was even a viral video produced by the Spirit in 2025, where players who knew Price’s name got a piece of candy (over 202,000 likes on TikTok).
The ‘admin’ is a proxy for the fans, a vehicle through which fans get to interact with the players. Price recognizes the role she plays and the evolving opportunity for admins like her to enhance the storytelling and relationship building in the team’s content.
“For the most part, I have just been behind the camera, and I think, even though it was only two years ago and it’s still pretty recent, that’s what being an admin has been,” said Price. “But I have since seen a lot of different clubs and organizations have that frontward-facing social media personality, FC Barcelona being one of them. Their [version of] me, basically, does often turn the camera around and [says] like, ‘Hey guys, this is us at our Champions League game, and we’re here in Italy, and this is a really big game for us, so excited to walk you through it.’ Something like that.
“So that is something that I have thought about…I’m definitely cognizant about my voice and what my hands look like and how I’m presenting to our fans.”
We relate to people more than brands. That is unquestionable, and why it’s so essential to drive connections with athletes. And, at the same time, that’s also why humanizing the ‘admin’ makes so much sense. It’s not some faceless corporate logo behind the camera, engaging in the comments, and interacting with the players — it’s a person, a stand-in for the brand, and an opportuntiy for fans to form a more organic parasocial relationship.
It’s those relationships that drive fandom as much as anything that happens in the game. The organizations that embrace that aspect will be the ones that succeed going forward. The days of cheering for laundry aren’t gone, but there are generations of fans that need something more. Their love is harder-earned, but even more visceral, more lasting, and more powerful than any logo can hope to capture.
On episode 315 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Paige Price, Social Media Creator for the Washington Spirit NWSL Club.
Watch or listen to episode 315 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Paige Price, Social Media Creator for the Washington Spirit NWSL Club.
Paige discusses building her career in sports and content, her role with the Washington Spirit, getting to know the players and creating content with them, being the fans’ lens into the team, behind the scenes of the Trinity Rodman re-signing, and more.
Ostensibly, sports business is selling a product. A social experience, affordable family entertainment, a compelling show.
But products have customers. In sports, we want fans.
Fans make the team or league part of their personality. Their favorite sport or athlete becomes an inseparable part of their identity. They become evangelists for the brand, recruiting others and spreading the good word. That kind of devotion transcends the product; that’s where brand comes into play.
Paul Stafford has worked with the biggest consumer brands in the world, in sports, but also well beyond sports. He appreciates that brands are not just a name, a logo, or a tagline — that’s not how he’s helped organizations like Airbnb, EA, and the Premier League, among others, develop authentic, resonant brands. He gave me a thoughtful description of how to think about brand and the difference between building a brand and executing a business strategy.
“I think many businesses are good at distilling a business strategy and understanding what they’re trying to do on a tangible level of, of ‘We’re going to invest in this space, we’re going to develop this product, so we’re going to appeal to these target audiences,'” said Stafford, CEO of global branding and creative agency Further. “But actually, you can’t then just communicate that to the world, you need to understand, well, what does that mean, and how does that translate into a role that this business is going to play in their customers’ lives?
“What is it that Jeff Bezos famously said: A brand is what people say about you when they’re not in the room. And that’s exactly it. What are they going to say about you?”
These are the elements that broaden the impact of the product or service. And that’s why it’s integral for all parts of an organization to understand the brand and know how to put it into practice. Brand isn’t a marketing motion, it’s not a sales tactic, it’s not a guide for the roadmap, nor a tone or personality trait — it’s all those things and more. Stafford explained that the strongest brands hit fans with consistency and conviction at every level and interaction — that’s what makes it undeniable and recognizable.
“Every single interaction that any customer, any employee, anybody, any business has with your business should really kind of play through that lens of like, well, how does it build on that proposition, how is it uniquely a relationship and an experience that only our business could have?” said Stafford, who led the company DesignStudio before it coalesced into Further. “And I think that’s it. You should be able to cover the logo, cover the marketing copy, but the whole experience and interaction should feel very much like that brand. So it doesn’t really matter what the touchpoints are. They can grow and will continue to grow, especially in this world of AI, but actually, that proposition should stay sacred from the very beginning, right the way through to the very end.”
Something special starts to happen as the brand seeps in, when customers have something to latch onto and can transform from customers to fans. In sports, marketers can think of fandom on a spectrum — from curious casuals to diehard evangelists. More broadly for brands across any vertical, Stafford referenced the ‘commitment curve.’
The commitment curve can be tantamount to avidity, but it can also mean more than that nowadays. Because the best marketing is word of mouth, real people spreading the word organically, those at the top of the commitment curve aren’t just patrons, but promoters.
“If you think about this as a sort of chart, and you think about it as who’s the most committed on this side, and also then how much you can ask those people who are committed that much…,” said Stafford, who invoked the ‘commitment curve’ concept as originated by former Airbnb Global Head of Community, Douglas Atkin. “So if you think about it as a founder or a chairman or the team, it’s those people who are the most committed to the business, and you can make the biggest ask of them. You don’t need to sell them anything. They are the business.
“Then you can think about each of these parts of the community as like a step down. So the next step down will be your employees, the actual team’s players in there, you can almost ask them the same. Next down, you probably have your most avid fans and supporters. Next down, you’ve got ‘I go three, four times a year’ kind of fans. All the way through to people who have never heard of you.”
An underlying truth in all this is that brands can’t be dictated. If, as Stafford mentioned earlier (referencing Jeff Bezos), that brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room, then surely brand cannot, by that definition, be centrally controlled. It’s in the hands of others, and the best that organizations can do is to influence the thoughts and ideas of the most vocal and influential.
It can be a sobering, even intimidating, realization that even with all the resources and distribution channels in the world, brands can only control so much. But flip that on its head, says Stafford, and empower others to tell your story. Make everyone who cares, who’s high on the commitment curve, stewards of the brand.
“I think when you’re generating a brand, what you need to think of is how do we give the assets to each of these people to make them take one step up that ladder?” said Stafford. “So what do we give our employees or our team? What tools do we give them so they start acting like founders, they start acting like CEOs, they know the decisions to make, they know how to communicate what this business means as a founder? Those superfans, how do we give them the tools they need to start talking about us like they play for the club?”
Stafford has seen the challenges and opportunities inherent in this framework when working with global, generational brands. They have to be resilient and preserved, but also adaptable and evolved. The key insight, Stafford explained, isn’t to concede to the staunch preservationists or follow the lead of those looking to the future — it’s about taking those fan evangelists on the journey with you. It’s a balancing act, said Stafford.
“If your club wants to move into all of these new spaces and forget its loyal fans, forget its roots, you lose that connection,” he told me. “And, like I’m saying, a brand is never successful by just its own internal teams communicating. You need those advocates. You need those fans to go and tell that story for you. So you need to take them on the journey. And that’s why, really, you have to understand what it is that’s important to them, how that becomes a foundation, and how it communicates where you’re going in the future.”
These principles came to bear when Stafford and his team were tasked with the Premier League rebrand in 2016-17, when the top global football league dropped the longtime ‘Barclays Premier League’ moniker and refreshed its logo, among other efforts. Stafford walked me through a bit of the process, describing the balance of respecting the past while looking ahead to the future. There were several elements for which to account.
“They went and interviewed the fans and listened to everything they said, and then created something that is exactly what the fans said,” explaining fans’ resistance to proposed changes. “But then, when they had it played back to them, it was wrong. I think that’s right.
“You gotta understand where you listen, where you challenge, and where you have to take fans on a journey to the future, even if they don’t like it at the beginning. So how are you going to take them on the journey?”
Bringing fans along for the ride necessarily requires loosening the reins of control. The platforms are too dynamic, and almost everybody wants to be something of a creator. It’s not just naive to think every fan who plays off your brand or remixes your content will adhere to some arcane, static standards, it’s short-sighted.
Stafford recognizes it’s not easy for brands to adapt to this new normal. But it’s an opportunity to achieve outsized results, to empower abassadors who will build on your brand and make it stronger, engendering greater loyalty, expansion, and engagement.
“We’re working a lot with brands now to say, well, we need to stop this being so locked down, we need to give it the flexibility to embrace and utilize the community, that they’re going to go and use these assets,” he said. “We just need to build some way that those things, whether that’s a visual way, whether it’s a tonal way, that kind of resonates and builds it back to us…
“So we are working with brands now [on] how do you create assets that can always be adapted, given out, iterated on, but also be recognized as you and yours and build that brand loyalty back to you. It’s going to be a bigger and bigger challenge as we go forward, but it is how brands need to start thinking.”
The most powerful brands, the ones that inspire zealous devotion, aren’t owned, but shared. That’s when customers act more like fans and fans behave more like evangelists. When fans don’t refer to the team as ‘them’ but ‘us’ — it’s our team, our organization, our brand. The commitment curve crests at the point where brand blends with identity, and fans feel part of it themselves.
