ANALYSIS - U.S. sports to social media: show me the money!

By Ben Klayman

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. sports leagues, corporate sponsors and media companies can score big points by using social media and are racing to create accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter for fans.

Those social networks help businesses in the sports world build stronger ties with consumers, and the connections made by leagues can help them in ways that can pay off.

"There is a lot of meat on the bone here," said Rob King, vice president and editor in chief of ESPN Digital Media, which is owned by Walt Disney Co. "We see huge upside."

That does not mean that the sports world can say "show me the money" yet.

"If you look at the direct revenue they are gaining from any one of these social platforms, it's growing, but relative to their other revenue streams it's still small," said Jim Bankoff, CEO of online sports network SB Nation.

However, sports businesses ignore social media at their peril, Bankoff said, and the numbers appear to back him up.

Americans spent 16.5 percent of their online time in October on social networking sites, up from 5.7 percent in the same month last year, according to Nielsen. Most of the money earned on such sites is through ads and small purchases, and the leagues see most of their revenue from sponsor deals.

The North American sports leagues have noticed that growth. The National Basketball Association has about 1.7 million fans on Facebook. But even smaller sports like curling and wallyball, an indoor volleyball game, have fans.