Before looking at why pro sports should embrace athletes taking up Twitter, it’s worth recalling some of the downsides. Last night’s NFL game provided a good example. As critics grow louder about the league’s decision not to settle a strike by its referees, the NFL’s own players just provided those critics with further ammunition. Here’s what New England Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes had to say about the replacement refs:

Can someone please tell these fucking zebras foot locker called and they’re needed Back at work !!!! #BreakingPoint

— brandon spikes (@BrandonSpikes55) September 24, 2012

Spikes is hardly the first athlete, of course, to make colorful use of Twitter. In London this summer, competitors from Greece and Switzerland were sent home from the Olympic for sending out racist tweets. And then there was this infamous tweet (since deleted) issued by Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashad Mendenhall after the killing on Bin Laden:

Given these obvious headaches, why actively encourage players to tweet? According to Mike DiLorenzo, former social media director for the NHL, the marketing boost from Twitter is worth it — even if some general managers and league PR people regard Twitter as a nuisance.

“It shortens the distance between the fan and the game,” said DiLorenzo in a phone interview. “20 NHL players [on Twitter] equals 20 of the highest profile brand advocates you can have.” To address misconduct, he notes that player behavior is already covered by public decorum clauses in contracts and that agents have an incentive to keep an eye on players’ social media activity.

A former NBA executive, who did not want to be named, likewise believes that teams should encourage players to use Twitter.

“It creates an amazing opportunity for the athlete to build a fan base, making them exponentially more marketable, and has a tremendous rub-off effect for their respect teams and leagues,” he said in an email statement.

The NBA executive added that more players on Twitter will mean more gaffes but that a younger generation is already showing more sophistication with their Twitter accounts.

“Unlike the athletes who took to these platforms two or three years ago, they are growing up with these technologies and they understand that their tweets could end up on SportsCenter faster than a post-game comment. Like any young person entering the workforce today, they are keenly aware of the impact their digital footprint can have on their ability to market themselves.”

Acceptance of Twitter is also likely to grow as more general managers come to use the micro-blog themselves. DiLorenzo said executives like Brian Burke of the Toronto Maple Leafs have come to recognize Twitter as a way to take a message directly to the fans without a media filter.

And for the fans, Twitter feeds can provide a welcome respite from tedious on-air interviews that make the players seem like dull, one-dimensional dimwits.

(Image by Julien Tromeur via Shutterstock)

But in the context of a live event airing during prime time, it’s not shabby. And with broadcast records being set during the Miami Heat-Oklahoma City Thunder finals, fueled by the LeBron James storyline and last year’s Heat stroke, the additional online accessibility didn’t hurt the NBA or ABC/ESPN. (Starting Monday, we’ll see what it does for ESPN’s wall-to-wall coverage of Wimbledon.)

ESPN released some internal Adobe and Omniture data about how digital worked across its platforms during the five games and on game days. A few highlights:

WatchESPN/ESPN3/Xbox: The finals aired on ad-supported ABC but also were streamed live by ESPN through its broadband network ESPN3, the WatchESPN app and Xbox Live Gold. ESPN estimates an average 122,251 viewers watched per minute, while the five games averaged 330,000 unique viewers and 17 million minutes. Unlike college basketball’s March Madness, where online viewership starts high on weekdays and shifts down as fans can watch from home, the prime-time NBA finals started with nearly 299,000 unique viewers for Game 1 and escalated. The highest number released by ESPN was 347,000 for Game 4. Finals viewing also increased substantially over the earlier play-off games; according to ESPN, Game 1 uniques and minutes streamed were up 40 percent and 49 percent respectively over the 2012 post-season average until then.

ESPN PR wouldn’t provide more detail, including which kinds of devices were used the most

ESPN3 and WatchESPN, which includes access to the broadband network plus linear streaming of ESPN and ESPN2, are available only to those subscribers whose pay TV providers and/or ISPs have authentication deals with ESPN. (For instance, I get ESPN3 as a Charter high-speed-data subscriber so can watch on PCs but do not have access to WatchESPN via my video providers Charter or DirecTV so can’t watch on mobile devices.) Yes, it’s Byzantine. The decision to include ESPN3 in the branding for WatchESPN — sending users to WatchESPN.com — only makes it more confusing.

Any comparisons to last year’s live viewing would be meaningless, skewed by Comcast, the largest U.S. cable provider, adding WatchESPN in the interim. Xfinity doubled the potential WatchESPN viewership to 40 million households when it added the service last month.

Mobile: Excluding live video, ESPN is gauging mobile usage (at least externally) by how people used mobile browsers and the ESPN ScoreCenter app. The network says the NBA mobile browser page averaged 1.5 million daily uniques on game days, up 24 percent over 2011. The NBA “card” in ScoreCenter averaged 984,000 daily users, nearly tripling from 336,000 last year.

The web: This is where you can really see the growth opportunities for ESPN are in mobile and video. Again excluding live video, ESPN.com’s NBA section averaged more than 1.7 million daily uniques, up 9 percent over last year. It’s an increase and nothing to sneer at but single-digit upticks almost seem flat these days. The average amount of overall game-day time spent in that section, 15 million total minutes, went up 12 percent.

At least ESPN provides some data

ESPN doesn’t want to release a more detailed account but they get credit for offering some specifics. Too often, the leagues or associations and the networks try to fake us out by offering only percentages of growth with no foundation. Take the USGA, which really, really wanted to brag about last weekend’s U.S. Open Championship tech gains but only offered percentages like “fan viewership of live streaming video increased 210 percent over 2011″ and “the USGA recorded a 44 percent increase in iPhone app downloads.”

When I asked USGA PR for more detail, I included an example from ESPN. I’m still waiting for a reply — but I’m not holding my breath.

The report from Seoul cited Gautam Anand, Google’s director of content partnerships for Asia Pacific, and Brian Suh, head of YouTube partnerships for Google Korea, and keyed off the success of last year’s streaming deal for the cricket Indian Premier League.

The NBA told Bloomberg, “We’re pleased that YouTube recognizes the value of live sports.”

YouTube’s serious interest in sports is not in doubt. It carried March Madness on Demand when CBS (NYSE: CBS) managed the interactive rights and recently hired Claude Ruibal, the former CEO of Universal Sports, to head sports content partnerships.

The leagues are equally interested in YouTube. The NBA and the NHL were part of the ill-fated Google Video offering (the failure that led to acquiring YouTube) with archive games. Each has a channel on YouTube now — NHL, NBA — for highlights. The NBA has 292,231 subscribers and more than a half-million upload views. The NHL has 73,634 subscribers and 67-plus million upload views.

But there’s a big leap between highlights and streaming live games online.

Update: According to a source familiar with the NBA’s thinking, the league had preliminary talks with YouTube but — and this is important — for Asia only. Any deal would be geotargeted to exclude the U.S.

The result is an app designed to provide the kind of rich, real-time data a TNT analyst sitting courtside might get during a game. This version is also designed specifically for the playoffs, which start April 19. Until then, users can track a tight playoff-spot race in the Western Conference with automatic updates to show how teams are ranked within each conference. The key features for the playoffs include:

– a front page that opens to a live playoff bracket that updates as games are played and serves as the navigation into the app.
– video highlights added during games.
– real-time in-game stats for teams and players.
– a live news ticker with news and video from NBA.com and the official NBA Twitter feed.

Paid version coming: Don’t expect the app to be free next season. “It will likely be a paid app next season.” Perez said. “In the off season, we’re going to take a step back and look at the entire app platform and work on how we pull it all together.” The NBA has been aggressive with mobile apps, launching more than 100 apps across iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. NBA League Pass Mobile, the out-of-market live video package, runs $40, while NBA Game Time is $10.

By contrast, Major League Baseball, which starts its season Sunday, charges the same for its iPad app as its iPhone version of MLB At Bat 2010, $14.99, for real-time stats, in-game highlights, live audio play-by-play and a high-quality live game simulation designed for the app. MLB.TV subscribers can log in to watch live games (blackout rules still apply).

As SVP/GM of NBA Digital, the partnership of Turner Sports and the NBA, Bryan Perez is responsible for NBA TV, NBA.com, WNBA.com, NBADLeague.com, NBA League Pass, broadband and wireless. While the NBA kicked off All-Star Weekend, Perez sat in a red,white, and blue leather recliner in the “living room” section of the NBA TV booth for the paidContent video interview embedded below. We discussed the league’s digital activities; advertising and subscription revenue; the use of social media; its mobile app blitz; and the Turner-NBA partnership. (Look fast during the video and you’ll see TNT’s Ernie Johnson prepping for the live show he was about to do from the open set.) Some highlights:

– Tweet: Players, who aren’t allowed to use social media in game during the season, were encouraged to tweet during the slam-dunk competition. Outside of All-Star, Perez doesn’t see much of an issue about highly paid professionals focusing on the game instead of tweeting. “While I think it would be neat to have players tweeting during an event, it’s probably more hype than reality, because at the end of the day it’s more hype than reality because at the end of the day it’s all about the game and winning and that’s what makes every other moment that they tweet special and relevant.”

– Repurposing:”We sell League Pass (out-of-market package) separately on television, online and on mobile, It’s a great opportunity for us because we’re basically able to repurpose the same game across every single platform but deliver them in a way that adds value. The ability to get it on your mobile phone is worth something to a fan. We’re always about delivering something that fans really want but also trying to extract some of the value from that.” The most money still comes from television but direct-to-consumer efforts are starting to take shape, including League Pass, mobile apps. D2C is in third place after television and advertising.

– Mobile growth: Before All-Star 2009, the NBA didn’t have a single mobile app. A year later, it has more than 100 across iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. “We have fans. We don’t have iPhone fans or BlackBerry fans.”

– Revenue across platforms: Advertisers “actually pay a lot for ubiquitous brand association … 28 percent of our advertisers that advertise across all three of our platforms account for 73 percent of or revenue. … They pay more and they buy bigger because it’s not something they can easily replicate.”

– Video streams: The league passed the half-billion mark for streams just before the All-Star break and Perez expects to hit 1 billion this season through NBA.com. That doesn’t include the new deal with YouTube. Perez: “The YouTube relationship’s only a month old so we don’t have projections for it yet. But we went into this assuming that it was going to be big.”

It’s not the in-market live video package NBA Digital GM Bryan Perez told us earlier this season he hopes to offer at some point but it does play up to fans’ passion for particular teans; the other apps the NBA offers are more about the league. I haven’t had a chance to use this one yet but only a die-hard fan would want all three of the pay apps. The array shows how many ways a league can mine some of the same territory though, while still presenting real choices:

– The free NBA Game Time Lite is stripped down to the essence: live scores, in-game stats, schedules, standings. It ranks #5 in the iTunes store for free apps,

– NBA Game Time has that plus live home and away radio feeds and more for $10. Ranks #16 in iTunes store for paid apps.

– NBA League Pass Mobile, produced with mobiTV, runs $40 for live video of up to 40 out-of-market games every week. Ranks #10 in iTunes store for paid apps. It’s also the most expensive sports app in the top 25.

The application is accessible through NBA.com for all nationally televised games on ABC, ESPN (NYSE: DIS), TNT and NBA TV, while team sites will feature club-specific versions of the TV Companion that will automatically become the default homepage when that team is in action.

Among the elements that will be available to users: pregame media notes, real-time stats, 3D shot charts and play-by-play analysis. There will also be halftime and postgame reports that include video highlight packages, updated box scores, leader boards, and interactive shot tracker feature.

Read more on Multichannel.

Subscribers to the linear package get broadband access at no extra charge. Perez says authentication issues make that too difficult to do now. “Right now, we don

NBA Digital will offer the NBA League Pass Broadband package — providing more than 40 live games per week — for $149.95, according to Turner officials. In addition, NBA fans will be able to select up to seven teams to watch throughout the season as part of a new $99.95 NBA league Pass Broadband Choice package. The league is offering a special early-bird pricing through Nov. 3 for League Pass Broadband and Broadband Choice both packages $134.95 and $89.95 respectively. For the rest of the story, go to Multichannel.

This story has been provided by our content partner Multichannel.

— In exchange for the VOD rights, the NBA wants up to 200 advertising spots per month on each network
— Networks will pay the league $3,000 for each game they stream live locally, or about $250,000 for the whole season
— The networks’ per subscriber fees (or fees they pay to the NBA for the rights to carry games in an area outside of a team’s 75-mile market) will be bumped up by about 9 percent

Who wins : The NBA, as it can reap the benefits (financial and otherwise) of digital adoption without having to invest in additional tech, sales or marketing infrastructure. Also, RSNs like *Comcast* SportsNet that are owned by cable operators, since they’ll be able to market the content as a value-add vs. rivals like *DirecTV* and *Verizon* (which is muscling in to the cable space with FiOS). It’s not all upside for the independent RSNs, however. While they can charge subscribers extra to stream games live, they’ll still have to pay their cable or satellite partner a cut of that revenue, and some preexisting contracts prohibit them from live streaming games altogether.