Due to constraints in their “pay by the word” contract, Major League Soccer, USL, NASL and NPSL teams social media managers have been forced to use silly animated GIF’s to express emotion. Recent examples of this include Orlando City SC using a Stone Cold Steve Austin GIF and Sacramento Republic using a Late Night With Jimmy Fallon GIF

“We have a strict pay by word contract that indicates that any tweet length in excess of our monthly quota will be met by a penalty. I’ve been storing up GIF’s from Wrestling, Movies, and inappropriate moments in live television to use for the last six months”, said Sacramento Republic Twitter manager Ralph Ventura.

Even though the financial differences between an MLS club and an USL club should be vast, MLS twitter account managers felt the crunch as well.

“I was told that we could only use 1000 words for the month of February and by the time I got done with the first pre-season game we were already feeling the word shortage, so I just got creative around Valentines day and started mocking up stupid Valentines with our players names as puns.” said Inez Barthez, Twitter manager for the Philadelphia Union. “I’m planning on spending the entire month of March communicating by emoticon and picture to avoid overshooting the word budget.”

The Nutmeg News has been able to confirm that certain Liga MX teams like Pachuca and Xolos reached out to a number of multilingual MLS and USL twitter managers to get them to switch leagues. One social media manager who wished to remain anonymous had the following to say, “Sure you might not get paid on time, but that one paycheck you receive is more than you would make in 5 months with Major League Soccer. Plus, you have an unlimited word budget! Kiss my GIF’s goodbye!”