The popularity of social media has grown to the point where one of the co-owners of a professional sports team is on Twitter, interacting with fans and correcting false reporting.
That interaction with fans has led to the club launching #PanthersPalooza, an event to bring the faithful together at one of the team’s games. From the official site:
A social event designed to connect all of the social media followers of the Florida Panthers together at a home game, the #PanthersPalooza package will consist of dinner with co-owner Doug Cifu, a scavenger hunt around BB&T Center, a post-game snapshot, a souvenir t-shirt and more.
Inspired by a super fan named Lucas Geraigery who set up a “GoFundMe” account to travel to South Florida for a Panthers game, the #PanthersPalooza night on March 7 will center around Geraigery meeting all of the Florida Panthers social media followers that are as passionate as he is about supporting the Florida Panthers online. Geraigery will also be able to thank the Season Seat Owners who graciously donated to his GoFundMe as well as Florida Panthers co-owner Doug Cifu, an avid user of social media who provided his tickets for the March 3 and March 5 games to Lucas.
“We believe that it’s vital for Florida Panthers fans to have a touch point with upper management and ownership,” said Doug Cifu. “Transparency and accessibility are very important to us. I’m looking forward to spending time at the game with some of our most passionate and dedicated fans that I’ve been corresponding with on social media.”
The event will host some of the Florida Panthers biggest digital influencers with the intention of creating buzz around the arena with the specific hashtag #PanthersPalooza.
For every #PanthersPalooza hashtag on Twitter and Instagram used during the game on March 7, the Florida Panthers will donate .50 cents a tweet towards purchasing iPads for children in ARC Broward’s preschool, afterschool and summer camp programs to use for educational purposes and as a means of adaptive communication for students with developmental disabilities.
This is a huge bit of outreach by the organization for a great cause. Keep your Twitter account in good standing and ready to roll, as every tweet with a #PanthersPalooza hashtag the Cats will be donating to a tremendously worthy cause in ARC Broward.
We’ll be promoting this throughout the day in our Caterwaul and GameThread, so jump onboard.
Make this an annual thing, Cats!