A beer of their own and the power of Twitter

• by Paul Kennedy  @pkedit, Mar 28, 2012

By Paul Kennedy

ECS HAS NO EQUAL. How popular are MLS's Sounders in the Seattle area?

Seattle's Redhook Brewery has designed a new craft beer, the No Equal Amber Lager, named after the original motto of the Sounders' largest fan group, the Emerald City Supporters, "No Equal."

Sounders fans, many of them beer aficionados, can find the beer -- sort of a Vienna-style lager -- at Sounders' games at CenturyLink Field, Emerald City Supporters-sponsored bars and retail locations.

"It was a lot of fun," Jen Talley, Redhook's brewing operations manager, told the Seattle Times. "The ECS were with us every step of the way."

POWER OF TWITTER. ESPNW's Jane McManus writes about how important Twitter -- and social media for that matter -- is to female athletes.

Just look at Alex Morgan's numbers. She had about 10,000 Twitter followers before the 2011 Women's World Cup, more than 100,000 at the end of the tournament and now has about 400,000 followers.

"You used to have to rely on 'SportsCenter' or TV exposure," said Dan Levy of Wasserman Media Group, which represents Morgan. "Now people can really handpick what they want to follow and care about."

Twitter is hugely important for female athletes who are not in the eye of the public each day, like male pro athletes.

"Women's sports don't have the money and the TV commercials that the men have," college basketball star Skylar Diggins said. "Our only mode right now of promoting the game is social networking and word of mouth."

KEEP IT LEGENDARY. UEFA sponsor Heineken has come up with an innovative way to pause your "viewing experience" until you can enjoy it the way you want -- hopefully, with a Heineken. For those who don't want see any references to the day's Champions League games before you get to watch the game or highlights, the Facebook app blocks out in green -- of course -- references to the teams, players and scores on your browser screen. (Make sure to read the instructions on how to turn off the app when you're finished using it!)

ICONS ON THE RUN. adidas doesn't need soccer to have Lionel Messi and David Beckham pitch for it. Messi and Beckham are such icons that adidas is using them, along with Katy Perry and Derrick Rose, to promote its new ClimaCool Seduction running shoe. The campaign features a 60-second video of them running to the remixed beat of Perry’s latest single, “Part of Me.”

TV NUMBERS. How big is soccer on German television? Last week's German Cup game between Bayern Munich and Borussia Moenchengladbach was watched by almost 10 million viewers, more than double the audience for the night's next most-watched program, the German version of Dancing With The Stars.
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