Assessing the integration of Twitter into the strategic operations of sporting organisations: the case of national governing bodies for sports in England

Abstract

Twitter, a social media application, has opened up communicative avenues for many stakeholders in the sports industry. The pervasive and rapid emergence of Twitter has given sports business and management researchers an opportunity to explore the strategic exploitation of the application by all kinds of sporting organisations. The purpose of this paper is to assess how sporting organisations’ social media content helps them achieve their strategic goals in terms of engagement and persuasion. To this end, the paper empirically examines how nine national governing bodiesfor various sports in England use Twitter. The study’s results accentuate the opportunities that these organisations have to use Twitter to achieve their ultimate goal of increasing participation in their respective sports. Accordingly, the paper recommends that these sporting organisations adopt proactive approaches to the way they use social media/networking and integrate Twitter into their strategic operations

International Sport Federations’ Social Media Communication: A Content Analysis of FIFA’s Twitter Account

“…It has been widely accepted that social media plays a major role in society as it has become a worldwide trend (Campos, Anagnostopoulos, & Chadwick, 2013). This also causes new challenges for sport organizations, as their main communication tasks developed from media relations and the provision of content for media representatives pertaining to tasks that were previously only performed by media companies (Nicholson, Kerr, & Sherwood, 2015).…”

“…In addition, a fresh stream of research has assessed the implementation of social media within sport teams' or sport organizations' strategies and their desired outcomes Abeza, O'Reilly, Seguin, & Nzindukiyimana, 2017;Campos et al, 2013;Gibbs, O'Reilly, & Brunette, 2014;Parganas, Anagnostopoulos, & Chadwick, 2015;Williams & Chinn, 2010). Within this context, Twitter has become a popular social media platform for multiple types of users such as athletes, teams and leagues across the globe to share a wide variety of content and enable followers to keep up to date with their favorite athletes and teams in the sport they are most interested in (Hambrick, 2012;Naraine & Parent, 2016a).…”

The Social Media Response From Athletes and Sport Organizations to COVID-19: An Altruistic Tone

“…Social media can create unique and powerful opportunities for high-profile athletes to capitalize on through increased athlete-fan interaction (Pegoraro, 2010) in a cost-effective manner (Filo et al, 2015). There is the potential for amplifying these opportunities further through proactive measures taken by sport organizations (Campos et al, 2013), opportunities that can translate to commercial gain. For example, the Australian Capital Territory Brumbies Super Rugby Club repost their athletes' social media activities to drive fans to the Brumbies' official social media accounts .…”

“…Filo et al (2015) included user cocreation in their definition, while also highlighting the relationship between consumers and organizations or athletes. Moreover, there is the prospect of improving the relationship between consumers and organizations through the effective use of social-media-facilitated two-way communication (Campos, Anagnostopoulos, & Chadwick, 2013). Indeed, these mediums have transformed how consumers and businesses interact with each other so much that Abeza, O'Reilly, and Reid (2013) labeled consumers as both "producers" and "distributors" of information (p. 123).…”

Investigating the Differences in Twitter Content and Effectiveness Between Individual and Team Sport Athletes

“…Furthermore, Campos, Anagnostopoulos, and Chadwick (2013), conducted a content analysis of tweets from nine different national sport governing bodies in England. Based on the number of replies and frequency of retweets, the evidence suggests that the content of tweets was essential for gaining and involving the followers and having them engage with the social media content (Campos et al, 2013).…”