FiT Publishing

Examining shifts in sport organizations’ social media content from before to during the pandemic-induced stoppage of play provides insight into digital branding during crises. Drawing on consumer-based brand equity and the context, content, and process framework, we examined adjustments made to brand image portrayal on Instagram and corresponding consumer engagement during the lockdown for two sport organizations at different seasonality stages. Results highlight how the National Basketball Association (NBA), facing the loss of their core product, utilized a need-based adjustment, while...Read more

Social media has become an important frontier in the sport sponsorship paradigm (Dees, 2011), offering brands a powerful mechanism to stimulate consumer engagement (Vale & Fernandes, 2018). Despite this potential, the extent to which social media content, as part of a sport sponsorship’s leveraging activities, can yield consumer engagement behaviors is unknown. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the impact of integrating sponsors into the social media posts of sport organizations on fan engagement. A total of 13,542 Instagram posts from four professional sports teams were...Read more