New NFL Rules Prevent Teams from Posting on Social Media

Over the past few decades, the NFL, which stands for the National Football League, has also been known to fans and players as the No Fun League because the league has been trying to remove all the fun from the game. While the new rules the league puts in place each year to curb player celebrations haven’t had an impact on betting odds, it has led to a slight decline in viewership.

For most of the ‘80s and ‘90s, NFL players celebrated touchdowns and other achievements creatively, giving fans such celebrations as the “Ickey Shuffle,” Terrell Owens celebrating touchdowns with pom poms, and other fun stuff.

However, the NFL doesn’t believe players should celebrate touchdowns excessively, and started penalizing the players that do so. Despite the penalties, players still try to come up with unique celebrations, but they aren’t allowed to celebrate with their teammates.

Now, the NFL is taking things a step further, and have announced that teams aren’t allowed to post video content on social media during games. As expected, the new rule has upset a few teams who like to engage their fans by posting clips of big plays by their players during games, allowing fans that can’t watch the games live to enjoy some of the action they are missing.

The new rules also prohibit teams and players from recording inside the stadium and posting videos on Facebook, Snapchat, and Periscope. The new guidelines are all part of the NFL’s new comprehensive social media policy.

According to the statement issued by the league, a first violation of the new rules will cost a team $25,000 in fines, a second violation of the new policy will cost teams $50,000, and every other violation after the first two will cost teams $100,000.

In addition to not being allowed to post videos during games, the NFL also forbids teams from posting video highlights of games on social media, or turning highlight s into animated GIFs.

The NFL decided to prevent teams from posting highlights and other videos on social media because the league wants all video content online to come from the official website of the NFL teams, so the league has oversight on the circulation of content.

While players and teams are rightfully upset the NFL decided to ban them from posting videos on social media, they have no choice but to comply unless they want to pay the hefty fines.

Outside observers on the other hand believe the NFL is making a big mistake with its draconian laws. Social media is a very important tool in today’s society, and a lot of people get most of their daily information from various social media platforms, which is why they are surprised the NFL doesn’t want to fully embrace it.

This year, the league partnered with Twitter to broadcast games live, but they have a problem with teams posting highlights on the same platform. With the league ratings down this year, it would make more sense to fully embrace social media instead of trying to limit what teams can do with their social media accounts.

The new rules are getting out of hand and someone needs to figure out how they can make significant changes without alienating the fans.