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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Consumer Engagement on Weibo in a Professional Sport Context: The Case of the Chinese Super League
Yuanyuan Cao, Ziyuan Xu, and Hirotaka Matsuoka
“Time to Award Some Medals”: A Comparative Social Media Analysis of Olympic Coverage in the United States and Australia
Kelsey Slater, Dunja Antunovic, Meg S. Messer, and Sam P. Dreher
Rights-holding broadcasters of the Olympic Games play an integral role in conveying the values of the Olympic Movement, but few studies have examined these networks’ social media content. This investigation involved a comparative content analysis of rights-holding broadcasters’ official Olympic Twitter accounts in the United States (@NBCOlympics) and Australia (@7Olympics) during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Results indicate significant differences between the two accounts in sport disciplines, gender representations, and national interest. Both accounts dedicated <40% of the tweets to women’s sport. Whereas the American outlet NBC promoted home athletes, Australia’s Seven Network emphasized athletes from other countries. Twitter accounts partially followed the televisual logics of representation patterns, but contextual factors specific to social media structured agenda diversity. Contextual elements (e.g., structure of sport schedules and nation-specific factors) are also relevant when interpreting representation patterns. Theoretical implications for agenda setting and methodological directions for cross-national Olympic social media research are discussed.
Social Media and Athlete Welfare
Emma J. Kavanagh, Chelsea Litchfield, and Jaquelyn Osborne
While the topic of athlete welfare has gained significant attention in academic literature, to date there has been a primacy placed on physical settings and their ability to augment or thwart the welfare of athletes. The discourse has, therefore, neglected the advent of social media spaces and their potential to have a significant impact on athlete welfare. Social media platforms are now a vital component in the lives of athletes who are increasingly reliant on maintaining an online presence and following. In this commentary, we consider the scope of social media and its potential impact on the welfare of athletes, particularly female athletes. In doing so, we identify and discuss some of the positive health and well-being outcomes associated with increased online communication and self-representation in social media spaces. We examine the scholarship concerning the threats posed by social media spaces, consider power in virtual environments and its impact on welfare, and finally suggest some future directions for scholarship in this field.
No Longer a Sign of Weakness? Media Reporting on Mental Ill Health in Sport
Keith D. Parry, Abigail G. Braim, Rebecca E. Jull, and Matthew J. Smith
This study analyzed media framing of athletes who have suffered mental ill health. The mass media play a crucial role in shaping public attitudes and perceptions surrounding mental health, and the present study aimed to examine the media reporting of athletes’ mental ill health and to further explore how this reporting has changed over time. We examined the reporting of elite athletes in three U.K. media outlets between January 2000 and December 2019, identifying 75 athletes from 26 different sports. From analysis, four themes were developed to consider the content of media reporting and how it has changed over three time phases. The analysis revealed that media reporting of mental ill health has increased over time, and changes were observed in terms of the specific terminology used, with greater depth in the articles, such as journalists speaking to other professionals to construct the articles. This study contributes toward our growing understanding of the reporting of mental ill health by providing empirical evidence of the increased attention to the topic and increasingly responsible reporting in the media.
Does He Make a Difference? Analyzing the Role of Men Athletes in the Framing of Elite Women CrossFit Athletes in Sportswear Retailers’ Marketing Materials
Alexandra Gibson and Andrea N. Geurin
This study examined the role of men athletes in framing women athletes in marketing images, and CrossFit was used as the sport-specific context. The purpose was to understand how consumers perceive women athletes, whether the presence of men athletes influences these perceptions, and if consumers perceive women athletes to be represented more accurately when pictured alone or with male counterparts. Using a mixed-methods approach involving both quantitative and qualitative analysis, questionnaires (n = 389) and interviews (n = 19) were utilized to gather participants’ perceptions on videos featuring all women CrossFit athletes and/or those with men and women CrossFit athletes. Results showed that consumers’ perceptions began to shift when looking at their athletic competence, although a focus on appearance remained. While the results of the questionnaires revealed no clear correlation between the presence of men athletes and the perception of women athletes, the interviews suggested a relationship, highlighting the complex role that male athletes play. Overall, the study indicates that consumers perceive women athletes to be framed more accurately when pictured alone and offers valuable insights into how men athletes affect consumers’ perceptions of women athletes.
Cyberbullying in Sport
Ellen MacPherson and Gretchen Kerr
Bullying is a well-recognized threat to the psychological, social, and physical well-being of youth and young adults. For over 30 years, researchers from diverse academic disciplines have attempted to conceptualize and understand these behaviors, particularly in school settings. In general
Becoming European Through Football Media? Representations of Europe in German Football News Coverage
Jonas Biel, Tobias Finger, Vincent Reinke, Jennifer Amann, Arne Niemann, and Marc Jungblut
In recent decades, the administrative and competitive structures of men’s elite club football in Europe have undergone a profound transformation toward Europeanization. As a result, football fans are increasingly exposed to European influences. These dynamics shape fans’ perceptions of and orientations toward Europe and contribute to constructions of collective identities. Because football is a highly mediatized sport, fans’ exposure to European influences and their constructions of identity are highly dependent on the representation of Europe in football media. To analyze this, we conducted a quantitative analysis of text-based online news media. Using selected German media outlets, we examined the extent and the patterned variation of media representation of Europe in football news articles. Our results indicate a highly selective media environment focused on a limited set of countries with high sporting relevance and a presence of German national-team players, while other countries rarely enter the media discourse.
Sports Media as Empathy Facilitator: The Contrasting Influence of Paralympic and Olympic Content
Kim Bissell, Andrew C. Billings, and Bumsoo Park
The number of people accessing the Paralympic Games is growing at a time when few television ratings rise, warranting study of the influence that exposure to Paralympic media has on viewers. This study contrasts two forms (Olympic, Paralympic) of exposure to sport competition while testing other potential moderating factors, including personal experiences with persons with disabilities, trait and state empathy, and attitude toward disability. An online experiment with a national sample of 411 subjects reveals further variables that influence empathy for Paralympic athletes and potentially contribute to stigma reduction. The most holistic finding uncovered was that personal experience with a disability was the biggest predictor of everything else. Experience with disability also served as a key moderator or media exposure.
When Sports Fans Buy: Contextualizing Social Media Engagement Behavior to Predict Purchase Intention
Emil Steiner, Matthew Pittman, and Brandon Boatwright
While sports fandom and social media advertising have been widely studied, and all major, professional teams use social media campaigns for direct sales, there is surprisingly little research on the relationship between fans’ social media engagement behavior (SMEB) and their purchase intention (PI), and none that differentiates PI across different platforms and sports contexts. This study addresses those gaps by exploring (a) how different kinds of fans engage their teams’ advertising on various social media and (b) how those different behaviors predict PI in different contexts. To do so, we utilized an SMEB framework to interpret survey data (N = 452) of U.S. sports fans’ social media engagement with their favorite teams over six popular platforms for two situations—in-game and out-of-game. Regression analyses determined the extent to which those behaviors predict PI across different sports and platforms during and outside of games. Our results show that fan SMEB varies by sport, platform, and situation. Furthermore, we found that information-acquiring social media behaviors—such as checking scores—best predict PI in-game, while fan-identity cultivation social media behaviors—such as posting—best predict PI out-of-game. In addition, PI predictability varies across platform and game situation, but not across age, gender, or even level of fandom. By contextualizing the relationship between fan SMEB and PI, our study lays a foundation to address these lingering gaps in the sport communication literature while providing actionable insights for teams and brands seeking more effective sales campaigns across an array of social media.
Determinants of Consumers’ Adoption of Mobile Ticketing via Self-Service Technology
Sanghoon Kim, Kwangho Park, Jun-Phil Uhm, and Hyun-Woo Lee
The purpose of this study was to examine the determinants of sport consumers’ mobile ticketing adoption by the technology readiness constructs and quality–satisfaction–behavioral intentions framework. A total of 295 participants were included in the analysis. Data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling and PROCESS macro. A content analysis was conducted to provide further insight into the proposed model using open-ended responses. The findings indicate that consumers’ technology readiness alone was not a positive driver of mobile ticketing but suggest a role for technology readiness in promoting mobile ticketing, combined with service quality, satisfaction, and online ticket purchasing. The importance and originality of this study are that it confirms the sport context as a unique and effective vehicle in advancing existing knowledge of consumers’ ticket consumption behavior via self-service technology across various disciplines. Also, the findings can be used to set out recommendations for policy or practice aimed at facilitating and sustaining mobile ticketing consumption.