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Interview with Brendon Hanley, Head of Global Social Media at FIFA

Gashaw Abeza

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Consumer Engagement on Weibo in a Professional Sport Context: The Case of the Chinese Super League

Yuanyuan Cao, Ziyuan Xu, and Hirotaka Matsuoka

Online fan communities on social media are an effective avenue for sport organizations to engage sport fans. Sport fans who identify with online fan communities express positive and negative consumer engagement behavior (CEB) on social media. Most researchers focus on the positive valence of CEB. This study explores the mediating effect of both positive and negative valences of CEB between online fan community identification and behavioral intention simultaneously. Additionally, the moderating effect of satisfaction with teams’ performance is examined. This study contributes to the conceptualization of the negative valence of CEB on social media and extends the literature on the dual valence of CEB in the sport context. It also provides insights to sport managers on relationship marketing on social media.

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Swag, Social Media, and the Rhetoric of Style in College Athletic-Recruitment Discourse

Luke Winslow, Blair Browning, and Andrew W. Ishak

Style—or the aesthetic dimensions of public presentation—is a dominant mode of symbolic expression. However, no one has explored how style functions as a coherent and generalizable symbol system influencing public conversations about athletic recruitment. The purpose of this essay is to fill this gap by developing a critical framework for theorizing the rhetoric of style in athletic recruitment discourse and significantly, how this is done through social media. We analyze sports journalism, recruiting websites, and the public messaging of athletic departments and athletes on social media according to five structural components: stylistic homologies, aesthetic rationales, primacy of text, imaginary communities, and market contexts. Our analysis offers practical lessons for athletes, journalists, and college athletic departments, but we also highlight several conceptual, methodological, and theoretical implications for scholars of communication and sport and social media interested in better understanding social influence in a dynamic and hyper-competitive context.

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“The Most Important Shot You Will Ever Take”: The Burgeoning Role of Social Media Activism in Challenging Embedded NCAA Patriarchy

Sarah Stokowski, Allison B. Smith, Alison Fridley, Chris Corr, and Amanda L. Paule-Koba

While the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) purpose is to protect college athletes within a hypercommercialized institutional setting, the protections prevent college athletes from accessing the lucrative marketplace. Extant literature has conceptualized the operating functions of the NCAA within the context of a patriarchal framework in which college athletes are infantilized, and authoritative institutional control is thereby justified. However, social media has provided a platform to engage in counter-storytelling and activism. As such, this study examined engagement with college-athlete-led social media activism. Utilizing a content-analysis methodological approach, social media engagement with the Twitter hashtag #NotNCAAProperty was examined over the course of the 2021 NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament. Findings revealed that most interactions were supportive of college athletes and suggest that social media may be a strategic mechanism for college athletes to engage in advocacy initiatives.

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Using Artificial Intelligence to Detect the Relationship Between Social Media Sentiment and Season Ticket Purchases

Nels Popp, James Du, Stephen L. Shapiro, and Jason M. Simmons

Sport marketing researchers and practitioners have suggested that sport organizations that effectively engage in social media conversations with fans are likely to influence fan behavior. Few prior studies have empirically examined the relationship between social media engagement and sport product purchases, particularly event tickets. The current study utilized artificial intelligence to examine eight user sentiments on official sport organizations’ Twitter accounts, then determine if those sentiments were related to season ticket sales. Three years of season ticket data were obtained from 62 NCAA Division I men’s basketball teams and utilized in a regression model, which also identified Twitter sentiment scores from 176,439 posts captured from the official Twitter account of those programs. A final model, which included several control variables, explained 65.7% of the variance in season ticket sales, with the lagged sentiments of “joy” (positive) and “sadness” (negative) having a statistically significant relationship with season tickets sold.

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Brand Management and Social Media

Beth A. Cianfrone

Social media allows sport entities (organizations, athletes, coaches, fans, and partnering companies) to reach audiences across the world and create, extend, maintain, and improve their brand equity through constant communication. Brand management and the strategies employed by entities to create effective content that reinforces brand image and brand equity are a common goal among sport marketers. Over the last 20 years, scholars have investigated a wide range of topics in sport social media and branding, yet there is a need to continue to expand the social media brand management literature to address and reflect rapidly changing industry challenges. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a reflection of past academic literature, while critically examining areas in methodology and theory to guide future research. The recommendations of more sophisticated designs, along with a call for experimental designs, qualitative approaches, and critical communication inquiry, among others, are discussed.

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From Gearshifts to Gigabytes: An Analysis of How NASCAR Used iRacing to Engage Fans During the COVID-19 Shutdown

Greg Greenhalgh and Chad Goebert

The sport industry is at an inflection point where all major professional sport leagues in North America are struggling to attract the same avid fans, once a staple within the industry. Furthermore, not only are the number of avid fans decreasing, the average age of avid sport fans is increasing. In other words, the current state of the sport industry indicates that fans are decreasing in number while simultaneously aging out of traditional professional sports. The current study aimed to investigate the ability of a traditional sport, NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) in this case, to utilize an esport, iRacing, to attract new and more diverse fans. Through a partnership with Zoomph, Twitter content was analyzed and revealed the shift from traditional racing to iRacing by NASCAR. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it assisted them in attracting new, more diverse fans whose sentiment on Twitter was positive. Overall, the current study demonstrated that traditional sport properties may be well served by tapping into the esport space in an authentic way to enhance their core product(s).

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The Kraken Awakens: Exploring the Digital Launch of a New Sport Team Brand During a Global Pandemic

Cole G. Armstrong, Melissa Davies, Matthew Blaszka, and Ann Pegoraro

This study explored the public’s response to the digital brand launch of the Seattle Kraken. Informed by agenda-setting theory and through content and social media analyses, the study identified the initial digital sentiment around the brand and the reach of the virtual conversations. The Kraken were able to encourage favorable conversation about the team by setting the agenda and encouraging consumers to engage with content at specific times during launch. In the first hour after brand launch, consumers focused conversation on the team, the logo and color scheme, and the effectiveness of the launch video. In the following 24 hr, the conversation remained positive and focused on how the brand positively represented the city and region. Through agenda setting, the Seattle Kraken were able to effectively launch their new brand while also setting the stage for positive brand-association development.

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Machine Learning in Sport Social Media Research: Practical Uses and Opportunities

James Du, Yoseph Z. Mamo, Carter Floyd, Niveditha Karthikeyan, and Jeffrey D. James

In tandem with the burgeoning popularity of social media research in the field of sport communication and marketing, we are witnessing a concomitant rise in its epistemological sophistication. Despite this growth, the field has given less attention to methodological issues and implications. In light of the development of machine learning, the overarching goal of the current research was to answer the call for innovative methodological approaches to advance knowledge in the area of social media research. Specifically, we (a) assess the current state of sport social media research from a methodological perspective, with a particular focus on machine learning; (b) present an empirical illustration to demonstrate how sport scholars can benefit from the advancement in natural language processing and the derivative topic modeling techniques; (c) discuss how machine learning could enhance the rigor of social media research and improve theory development; and (d) offer potential opportunities and directions for the future sport social media research that utilizes machine learning.

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Regulating Ambush Marketing in an Increasingly Social Era

John Grady

The practice of ambush marketing continues to proliferate around mega sport events, notably during the Olympics. The ongoing commercial threat to official sponsors and event organizers threatens the sponsorship model on which the events rely. The current situation is further complicated by increased social media activity and engagement by competing athletes to engage not only with their followers on social media but also with endorser brands who may not always also be official sponsors of the event. The increasing role of Rule 40 of the Olympic Charter as a regulatory tool on social media to prevent ambush marketing is discussed as an additional brand protection measure beyond traditional legal enforcement. The commentary explores advances in recent scholarship related to ambush marketing and suggests directions for future research. Legal, policy, and practical implications for social media in sport are discussed.