Social Media in Sport

Social media is defined as internet tools that facilitate interaction by enabling the continuous generation, exchange, and modification of content (Noone et al., 2011). Morales et al. (2017) explains how brands and business initially seen social media as a risk to employee performance and productivity, if they could access and use it during working hours. Effectively, it was a set of platforms in which people could communicate with each other, and share their feelings, emotions and lives with no benefit to their employer. It was only upon brands realising that they could reach a unique and niche audience that would act as an avenue to drive sales that opinions changed. However, this can be perceived in both positive and negative ways

Westberg et al (2018) believe sport plays a massive role in the sociocultural fabric of many countries and has the ability to create and sustain highly identified and invested consumers across a broad range of demographic groups. As a consequence, sport presents an enticing marketing platform for brands, especially with the nature of social media. Alcohol and betting promotion and consumption are entrenched in sporting events internationally, fuelled by both commercial considerations and social practices.

Social media is used by a considerable broad demographic, including those that are under the age of 18. Alcohol/Betting advertising and sponsorship on social media is growing substantially, with young people being exposed to such content. However, as a whole research has found that society’s exposure to content also has led to increased consumption and creation of a positive attitude towards alcohol and betting brands (Zerhouni et al., 2016). Social media platforms are attractive for such brands because of the potential for accessing extensive data on consumers that can be used for highly targeted marketing (McCreanor et al., 2013).

While marketing through social media platforms is not new for alcohol and betting brands, the use of sport as a channel for interaction with consumers raises a series of worrying implications. Social media has provided a greater platform to reach different target audience that were potentially not reached previously via traditional means. The powerful combination of sport’s intense emotional engagement and the exponential potential of social media networking enable brands to connect with users by leveraging shared allegiance and belonging (Lee and Youn, 2009). Conventional advertising cannot rival sport‐linked social media for converging consumers’ passions with an alcohol brand’s symbolic associations with sport (Sullivan and Weerawardena, 2006).

The 18–29 age group are the highest users of social media, with 90% using these platforms. Therefore, regulators need to look at what safeguards are in place to limit exposure by underage people to messages about alcohol and betting through social media, especially through the channels of collaboration and competition. The youth segment has a significant reliance on social media as a mechanism for self‐enhancement and belonging at a time when technology is progressing quite quickly (Westberg et al 2018).

If clubs are satisfying their fans needs and wants, then it is certain that current fans will continue to support, while new fans will support the team creating increased support and income for a club. Malthouse et al (2013) suggest that companies need to overcome the simple thing of having a social media presence. They need to engage proactively and daily with consumers to gather their thoughts and perspectives, to ensure that consumer’s needs are being continually met to ensure maximum satisfaction. By engaging with fans, companies are keeping their brand to the forefront of consumer’s minds, ensuring engagement is existent both online and offline, to improve and retain good company-customer relationships that lead to repeat purchases. This is extremely relevant in a sporting context to ensure that clubs are engaging with fans so that they come back to watching the team again and again. However, other factors such as team quality and performance play a role in fan engagement and happiness that social media can’t control directly (Nisar et al 2018).

Rothschild (1984) puts a large emphasis on the requirement of attracting sports consumers and increasing spectators by sports managers, broadcasters, sponsors, advertisers and marketers. Sport is seen to saturate our daily lives and are exposed to it both online and offline consistently from a marketing perspective.

How a particular company is going to market to their target audience requires an understanding of what motivates them to engage in order to increase sales, repeat purchasing and in the form of sport spectatorship (Roberts et al., 2016). Hoffmann and Novak (2009) look at the importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Those intrinsically motivated have more involvement and therefore will engage more with social media posts, through liking, commenting and clicking on links. Those that are extrinsically motivated have less involvement, they may see the content that has been uploaded, however don’t engage as much. It is more difficult to gauge the ROI in these instances.

Football clubs in many cases are late adopters to many forms of technology. This is shown by Liverpool FC only setting up a website in the early 2000’s. However, in recent years with the creation of a dedicated media team, they have become one of the best sports teams in the world in regards social media presence and following.

For years social media was seen as a threat by sports clubs, it was a platform for gaffes, scandals and hacker attacks. A major issue for any sports team these days in relation to social media relates to the conduct of their players, there have been many notable cases in which players have crossed the line in relation to their comments, posts and interactions on social media, and it has become an important thing for the club to deal with. Many players due to language barriers and other factors, employ commercial teams that advise and post on behalf of the player to ensure that they are carrying themselves correctly in society. Football players are seen as influencers and therefore their presence on social media can lead to them generating income by collaborating with brands through the content they post (Kuper and Szymanski, 2018).

Nisar et al (2018) study looked at two specific questions: (i) whether or not a club’s online interactivity and spectator interest is determined by its position in a sports tournament; and (ii) whether social media as a customer engagement strategy has an impact on increasing spectator interest. They measured the interactivity of the football team with their social media channel being Facebook and also their website on a points basis to develop results. The results of this study suggest that there is limited significance to support the assumption that there is a relationship between a club’s sporting performance and spectator interest. The study does however provide some evidence that there is a linear relationship between total interactivity through the use of social media and spectator interest.

Football clubs that are playing in the higher leagues of European football are seen to be not necessarily more interactive with their fanbase than those in the lower leagues. It can be considered though that how interactive a particular team is on social media won’t influence a team’s performance, but may influence the number of fans and engagement there are for the team. What motivates a spectator of sport specifically is involvement through interactivity (Chung and Zhao, 2004).

Sports teams are employing a large team of filmmakers and digital marketers to develop and release a large amount of engaging content on their social media channels to appeal to more and more followers. This is taking a step towards brand loyalty at a time when many people from the far east support a number of football teams often big rivals like Liverpool and Manchester United from the same country and league.

Social Media has grown so much and has become such an essential part of the major sports teams, that content is now being scheduled to automatically be posted out on social media channels on a 24 hour period to ensure that they are able to engage with fans in other geographic regions that are on different time zones. An example of which is Liverpool FC. They have got a lot of attention in recent times for the quality of their digital content, its reach and its engagement figures. This is a great credit to the team behind it, that are one of the first top sports teams to dedicate as much resources to grow their brand globally via digital means. To ensure engagement with the Asian, Australian and New Zealand regions while they are in day time hours Liverpool are sending out content to those regions, while their home UK market are traditionally asleep.

Social Media is a voice for people, these days many sports people are speaking directly to their fans, cutting out the necessity for journalists. This is a potential risk for media outlets, so it has become increasingly important for them to continually innovate. Shown specifically in media’s increased presence on social media and providing new and different content through subscription services such as The Athletic.

The ability for clubs to compile in depth databases of their fanbase has become easier with the use of social media. Clubs can then use this database of fans preferences and distinctive interests to provide particular content and products that will engage that fan and lead to them making a purchase. While the club could also use the database intuitively as a source of income by selling it for millions to other companies who don’t have the ability to create such an informative database, however recent GDPR legislation plays a role in its overall potential.

In 2008 executives from Facebook urged Cristiano Ronaldo’s management team to start a Facebook account for him due to his worldwide popularity. He currently has 123million followers. The majority of clubs and players are on all social media platforms today, with many having their page in different languages to appeal to a greater audience. Big clubs believe that for the first time ever, that social media can reach their legions of fans worldwide. The next objective is to turn their large followings across the world into revenue.

Football clubs are now developing strategies on how they can get those fans from the far corners of the earth to spend money on the club in which they have bought a fake football shirt, engaged on social media and watched every game. It can be said that football club’s worry too much about media scandals at a time when young people are used to spontaneous exchanges as they have grown up with social media so it has become the norm. While young people see social media as an essential element of sports fandom. They use it to engage with other fans, also called the “second screen”. However, it has been considered that it is becoming the first screen as it is often more entertaining than the game itself.

Social media plays an extremely important part in sponsorship, brands seeing the exposure a sports team can get on social media and what the benefits would be with partnering with a particular club, drives them to pay large sums of money in order to have this distinctive privilege , be it shirt sponsorship, stadium naming rights or training kits (Kuper and Szymanski, 2018). Some of the biggest opportunities to access current and potential customers are at sporting events through digital and social media that also offer greater reach and direct engagement.

By engaging fans via social media, sports rights holders can open new communication channels with their audience that can be measured and valued as a new commercial opportunity with sponsors. Businesses that get involved through sponsorships and social media promotions, meanwhile, benefit from increased brand affinity and loyalty.

Real Madrid has become the world’s largest sports club on social media with around 222,471, 779 followers. Barcelona carried out an experiment in 2015, with sports marketing agency IMG to examine what value social media adds to its shirt sponsorship rights. Over one weekend, there were 61 million web impressions of the Qatar Foundation’s sponsorship of the club’s shirts.

Mobile phones and tablets have allowed social media to flourish and now football stadiums offer fans Wi-Fi, which has allowed fans to interact with social media in game while in the stadium. Also, leading to sports clubs being able to create commercial opportunities in the from of ordering food & drink to your seat via the club app, or digital match programmes.

The challenge for businesses is to find ways of measuring the value social media offers, beyond simple page views and unique user data. “Increasingly we are building social media benefits into sponsorship contracts but it’s a mistake to measure it in a narrow vertical, saying that you have spent so much on Twitter and asking what you’re getting back for that,” says Mark Lichtenhein, the PGA European Tour’s former head of television, digital media and technology. He went on to say “You have to look more holistically in terms of how it adds value to the brand and its audience reach. An investment in digital media may come back through other revenue streams. The more popular your product is, the better rights values you can attract.”

Ultimately, social media is a storytelling medium, and it’s here that it has been so successful in helping sports franchises market themselves to the wider public. Social media can be used to tell the story of an underdog, to share success stories, and being able to document real fan stories and then present them to a much wider audience in a way that feels authentic.

What has changed the most in the sports marketing industry is the ability to establish very direct relationships with marquee athletes who are using their own personal social media accounts.

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