Why Are The NY Rangers Limiting Their Social Team’s Access to Players?
You don't need to care about hockey to care about this story.
Last week a very specific side of Twitter erupted: sports social. It was in reaction to a report that the NY Rangers limited the access that their social team had to players and banned them from traveling with the team “due to an incident last spring.” Sports Twitter is not usually a part of the internet I spend much time on—but the chatter around this reporting reached a level so high that the tweets somehow seeped into my algorithm. Soon I found myself fascinated too. It led me down hours-long phone calls, scandalous theories of the “incident”, and an investigation into the culture of what it’s like to post on behalf of a multi-million dollar team. This is a story about the NY Rangers—but it’s also a story about any social professional that’s worked for an organization that’s stuck in the past.
On December 19th, Vince Z Mercogliano, a journalist for a local NY news outlet, published a report on the alleged toxic culture of Madison Square Garden Co. and, specifically, the NY Rangers. It outlined a “Big Brother environment”, “paranoia”, and a “feeling of walking on eggshells within the organization”. One quote from the story in particular kept popping up as I scrolled:
“There have been dismissals within the front office, scouting, public relations and social media departments, with the latter no longer permitted to travel with the team due to an incident last spring.”
It’s that last part of the quote in particular that has both NY Rangers fans and sports social pros confused. The point of having a social media presence for a team is to provide insider access for fans—why would you revoke it based on one “incident”?
One recent post from the @NYRangers Instagram has been shared widely as proof of these new changes. The video depicts players entering the arena for a home game against the Seattle Kraken. Instead of a dynamic video shot by a social person, it’s what appears to be security footage of the player arrivals. A fan compared the look of the video to Luigi Mangione’s perp walk.
Kimberly Bates, who does social for the Milwaukee Admirals, an American Hockey League team, tweeted, “i cannot imagine, as an annoying social media admin, having to build a good rapport with a team that i am also being told to be as distant as possible from LOL”. Some of the most popular posts she’s created for the Admirals clearly require her to have a good working relationship with the players—like this one of her scaring the team with a fake spider. It has 4.3M views.
In my time reporting this story and writing this newsletter, I’ve gotten an understanding of what it’s like working in sports social. It’s not for the weak. In the Link in Bio Social Media Salary Survey, we created a chart that ranked median salaries by industry—sports was the third lowest paying industry, sandwiched between non-profit and education. When I tweeted in shock that this was the case, I heard from many sports social pros that the teams take advantage of the fact that there are hundreds of fans who could easily replace you. Management tells you that. They make it known that you are expendable. There are also expectations of 24/7 coverage, unrelenting fan trolls, and bad behavior within the organizations. To an outsider, doing social for your favorite sports team sounds like a dream but the reality can be brutal.
While I’ve heard plenty of rumors as to why Madison Square Garden Co. and the NY Rangers made this rule prohibiting the social media team from traveling—inappropriate behavior, socializing with players, personal social media policy—most people I spoke with felt the move was an overcorrection. The question of “Why not just fire the bad actor and let the social team continue to have access?” kept coming up.
I asked a NY Rangers fan who happens to work in social media what they thought of all of this. They confirmed what I suspected—that, even outside of the “incident”, the team has never really had a very fun or engaging social strategy. The fan attributes it not to the social team, but to management being “precious with their brand identity” and belief that they are a “luxury sports team.” To put it bluntly: a culture that’s stuck in the past will always breed a bad social presence. Does the very top even see the value of having a strong social strategy? My gut would say no.
The fan tells me, “As a social professional I don’t know a single industry colleague that would decide for the social presence to be this way, knowing how other teams are progressing in the space. We are constantly at minimum looking at what our competitors are doing if not directly communicating with them to learn.” They go on to say, “I don’t know the details of the incident mentioned in Vince Z Mercogliano’s latest report on the culture situation, but what I can tell you is that given how uptight management seems about the brand identity, I’m not surprised they’re also controlling how much the social team can interact with the players. If you look at any sports social account you know how crucial it is for the social team to develop a relationship with their on camera subjects (the players!) so they will be more willing to go on camera, creating a deeper parasocial fan relationship. By taking away half of the games they can attend to make that happen, they’re cutting that relationship’s potential in half, and it hurts everyone, especially the fans.”
Let’s talk about the fans.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen fans start to develop a real sense of pride around how their teams show up online. After the Boston Celtics won the NBA championships, they posted a video recapping the game. The comments weren’t about the win, they were about the social media team. The most liked comment on the video reads, “give the media team a ring too”. Fans want photos to share to their Instagram Stories and TikToks to send to their group chats—good social media teams are what power that. Just look at the success of the LA Chargers, NY Liberty, Brooklyn Nets, and Seattle Kraken.
On the flip side, fans feel it when their social teams aren’t delivering. One recent Tweet says, “ik this is the least of my worries about the new york rangers rn but i wish they had a fun social media team.” The fans want better.
It’s unlikely that we will ever know what the “incident” was that caused the NY Rangers social media team to be banned from traveling. When I first started reporting this story, that’s what I was looking for too. As I dug deeper, it’s clear the organization’s backwards reaction to the “incident” is what’s important here.
This isn’t a story about one bad actor and a salacious “incident”. It’s a story about the crushing effects that a lack of empowerment has on a social team.
As many have pointed out, even before the “incident” and travel ban, the NY Rangers weren’t showing up online in the most engaging way. If you’ve ever done social media in a workplace where there’s zero trust—whether in sports or not—you know how much it can bleed into your strategy. Never-ending approvals. Fear of taking any sort of risk. Gaslighting on what types of posts are allowed. Hearing “no” enough times that the strategy plays it safe. It’s a recipe for a bland social presence. One that is “good enough”. Until the organization truly values the huge role that social media can play, it will be very hard for any social team—no matter how talented—to have the buy-in they need to find success.
As the fan I spoke with told me, “Outside of winning games, if leadership wants to win the fans back, they have to let the people who hit post breathe life and transparency into the biggest online representation of their team. It’s a business at the end of the day and social is crucial marketing for the team and the game.”
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"the teams take advantage of the fact that there are hundreds of fans who could easily replace you. "
To the elites, fans are just peasants, one step above slaves. And so we see the wealthy class exploiting workers in yet another industry so they can make their millions/billions.
Clearly, people need to wake up and stop worshipping their rulers and false idols. It's one thing to admire sporting excellence, but to tolerate this level of contempt for their fans and employees is despicable. This is why I hate the sports, fashion and movie industries. They are all founded upon and entrenching a class/caste system.
If you want a contrast of what social media can be like, look at the presence of the Rangers cross-river rival that stomped them in their most recent game: the New Jersey Devils. Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, take your pick- it’s a lot of fun. Funny memes, memorable videos, cool player moments. It’s a great look at how a sports social media team can be.