FiT Publishing

Women’s sport has newfound momentum and popularity, and fans are proceeding to engage through various channels like social media. However, social media is not always positive, and there exists a dark side to this online dynamic. Left unchecked and unexamined, it is possible that fans withdraw from these digital spaces, a potential critical problem for sport marketers seeking to build online fan communities. This study explored fans’ experiences of toxicity in women’s sport social media communities through semi-structured interviews with self-identified women’s sport fans. The findings...Read more

This study explores the use of pseudo-nostalgic designs in sport marketing, examining consumer response to the National Hockey League’s 2020‒2021 Reverse Retro uniform campaign. By investigating user response to the twelve teams’ Reverse Retro sweater release and promotion on Twitter, the study endeavors to explore the extent to which pseudo-nostalgic designs elicit nostalgic sentiment and the degree to which such nostalgia may impact upon individuals’ perceptions of uniform designs. The findings of the research suggest that while pseudo-nostalgic uniforms can inspire feelings of nostalgia...Read more

Times of crisis impact the careers and brand management of athletes. Th e COVID-19 pandemic serves as the research context as we explore how athletes react, cope with, and respond to external disturbances through modifications in their personal brand management. We employed a qualitative approach, drawing on semi-structured interviews with elite athletes (N=15). Th e themes were verified by reviewing participants’ Instagram posts. The findings show that the COVID-19 context has created unique challenges for athletes’ careers and personal branding, including emotional distress,...Read more

Athlete brands exist within a network of brand relationships. Thus, considering the joint influences of related brands at different levels (league, team, and athlete) is essential for understanding how athlete brands are built. We focus on growth factors impacting athletes’ social media followings (Twitter and Instagram) around the critical juncture of team transfer periods. We use data from the NFL Draft , because this moment in time provides a key opportunity to capture combined infl uences from league-, team-, athlete-, and platform-related factors on athlete brand development. Through...Read more

In spite of the prominence of social media within sport marketing and increased attention from researchers, very few studies have looked at the linguistic makeup of social media content in sport. The values and emotions a company tweets convey important information about brands and marketing efforts. The research used two studies to computationally analyze thousands of tweets from four baseball teams and four apparel companies. Results show unique relations between values and emotions across both baseball teams and apparel companies. As an example, Nike communicated the value sense of...Read more

The use of social media as a communication tool to engage others has rapidly proliferated over the past decade (Wallace, Wilson, & Miloch, 2011). According to the Pew Research Center, 73% of all online adults were using social media as of September 2013 (Brenner, 2013). Facebook leads the way with 71% of all online adults using the platform in 2013; however, a growing number of individuals are also using other emerging platforms such as LinkedIn (22%), Pinterest (21%), and Twitter (18%) (Duggan & Smith, 2013). Further, approximately 42% used multiple social media platforms (Duggan...Read more

Research on both brand personality and social media in sport is still in their respective developmental stages, and to date no research has examined the impact of social media use on sport brands. This study was the first to examine if differences exist in the brand personality of a sport event between those that use the events social media page and those that do not. After surveying fans of a major National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) event, the results revealed that eight of the nine brand personality items were rated significantly higher for users of the event’s Facebook page...Read more

Social media provides brands with “personal, trusted, and direct” connectivity to consumers (Drury, 2008, p. 277). Through social media, brands are able to target specific consumer demographics about new and existing products, thereby increasing the likelihood of purchase of those products. With more than 1 billion active users (“Facebook Newsroom,” 2012), Facebook has become a leader in social media and an important vehicle through which sport marketers connect their brands with consumers. From the London 2012 Olympics alone, brands saw significant growth in fan interaction on Facebook....Read more

In 2012, Nike became the first company in the United Kingdom to have a Twitter campaign banned after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the U.K.’s equivalent of the United States’ Federal Trade Commission, held that soccer star Wayne Rooney had violated rules for clearly communicating to the public that his tweets were advertisements for Nike (Furness, 2012). Nike, through its endorsement deal with Rooney, encouraged Rooney to engage in Twitter messaging as part of its wider “Make It Count” advertising campaign. Rooney’s tweet, which went out to his 4.37 million followers, said: “...Read more

Given the availability and usage of social network sites (SNS), professional sport teams are drawn to this medium as a way to reach new and foster existing fan relationships. Despite the ubiquity of social media, however, little empirical research is available on how Facebook page attributes, and other SNS strategies, influence user participation. Grounded in the relationship marketing framework, the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the page attributes found on team Facebook pages and user (i.e., fan) participation. An econometric model is developed and tested...Read more