“Moneyball” to hit sports social media sweet spot, MSR says

Moneyball first sports movie to leverage SocialGuideMovies

“Moneyball,” the Brad Pitt movie about Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, is primed to be one of Hollywood’s first sports social-media grandslams.

Box office predictions include Rope of Silicon at $21.84 million, while TotalNerd puts the opening at $22.4 million. MobileSportsReport believes the Hollywood pundits have underestimated the power of the growing sports social media community. We think “Moneyball” will easily clear the $23 million marker this weekend, on its way to becoming one of the 2011 movie season’s hits.

Why will “Moneyball” exceed expectations?

What Hollywood doesn’t seem to know about “Moneyball” is that it is tailor-made for the mobile sports viewing phenomenon that is occurring across the United States. According to Juniper Research, mobile sports content and services could reach $3.8 billion in 2011. “Moneyball” plays right into the sweet spot of this emerging market of hard-core sports fans, who most often had to get a smartphone or tablet device to manage their fantasy teams, and now use it to get a 360-degree of the game through Twitter and, increasingly, as their primary screen for watching sports live. This audience is chock full of influential Twitter power users and the easily influenced. Those are the people who are going to push the “Moneyball” box office past expectations.

MobileSportsReport says:

If “Moneyball” is as good as people say it is, the mobile sports community will play a significant role in driving people who might not otherwise go to the movies. And, if that happens, things could get a lot more box office boff for the Hollywood suits who greenlit this pic.”

For their part, the producers of “Moneyball” are getting busy to get the mobile sports community involved, engaged and motivated. Consider some of the things “Moneyball” has done so far on Twitter, since the movie’s opening:

1. Posted the hashmarks of every former Oakland A’s player who is active on Twitter and mentioned on the movie
2. Retweeted positive press from the NYTimes, Roger Ebert and RottenTomatoes, among others
3. Promised to repost photos of moviegoers who wear Oakland A’s gear to “Moneyball.”