Not so sure. I like learning at a pace in which I'm really understanding the technologies that I'm picking up. For PennApps, we do a series of tech talks over the course the week before the hackathon, and I encourage students who don't know how to code to attend those talks. I think "learning" at a hackathon can leave a lot of gaps in knowledge, which is not necessarily terrible but not the strategy I would immediately advise.
A number of hackathons have done this to great success. If you want to expand a hackathon beyond ~40 teams, you do need to figure out a way to structure demos better, since less 2 minutes per demo is too little time to really show off what you built, in my opinion. And I don't think it's a poor idea to go beyond 40 teams for a hackathon like this (because then you have to start being super selective of who you let in, which sucks for teams who are new to hackathons).
This is interestingly non-viral. Although it's one of the coolest links I've seen in a while, it takes much longer to "consume" this, and sharing doesn't have until after consumption. Interesting to note how much less frequently this was shared than some much interesting "popular links".
I don't see anything here unique to the sports industry, just an instance of a single sports team having a perspective of social media that I think is common to many entities across a variety of industries.
Also, a minor note: teams can push content to "fans" on Facebook as well. Status updates from things I like do show up on my news feed.