Athletes as ambush marketers? An examination of Rule 40 and athletes’ social media use during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games

Abstract

Research question: Ambush marketing is utilized at all major sporting events, and Rule 40 of the Olympic Charter is designed to prevent ambush marketing tactics during the Olympic Games, restricting what content athletes can post on social media about non-Olympic sponsors. Utilizing ambush marketing as a framework to guide our examination of athletes' adherence to Rule 40, the purpose of this study was to examine Olympic athletes' social media posts from the 2016 Olympic Games to determine whether athletes violated Rule 40 and therefore engaged in ambush marketing.Research methods: Using content analysis, this study examined 100 randomly selected U.S.Olympic athletes' social media posts on Instagram for a six-week time period before, during, and after the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Frequencies, chi square, and independent samples ttests were calculated with SPSS25.Results and Findings: Significant differences in posting behaviors existed during the three time periods, and over 19% of all posts during the blackout period violated Rule 40, indicating a form of ambush marketing by the athletes. Additionally, athletes appeared to miss opportunities to highlight their personal sponsors and build their athlete brand after the Games.Implications: Athletes play a role in the Olympic ambush marketing network, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and Rule 40 enforcement issues were apparent, leading to questions about its feasibility. Athletes' brand-building efforts should extend to the time period after the Olympic Games, as they have the ability to highlight sponsors in their posts to a greater degree during this timeframe.

Challenges of Self-Presentation and Athlete Branding Among Saudi Female Exercisers: An Auto-ethnography of a Muslim Saudi Personal Trainer Instagram User

“…However, social media special features allow users to present themselves with outsourcing materials such as quotes that they have written or taken from others. Scholars of online social networks have studied online platforms for self-presentation and athlete branding examination purposes (Geurin & McNary, 2020;Kunkel et al, 2020;Na et al, 2020). The MABI classifies consumers' perceptions of an athletic brand into three main categories:…”

“…"Athlete brand" is a term introduced by Arai et al (2014, p. 98), defined as follows: "a public persona of an individual athlete who has established their symbolic meaning and value using their name, face or other brand elements in the market" (Geurin & McNary, 2020;Hodge & Walker, 2015;Kunkel et al, 2020;Park et al, 2020). Construction and promotion of an athlete's brand image are beneficial for various points; it impacts the athlete's price on the market, leading to higher incomes and less marketing communication efforts (Arai et al, 2013;Evans, 2017;Geurin & McNary, 2020). Decreasing marketing communication operation efforts were described by Duffy and Hund (2015) as they examined the Instagram content of top-ranked fashion bloggers who displayed their attractive appearance and lifestyle activities while travelling with their friends around the world.…”

“…On the other hand, athletes use OSN as a marketing tool for their professional career to promote products, sponsors, charities, and lifestyle activities (Doyle et al, 2020;Geurin & McNary, 2020;Hambrick et al, 2010;Hodge & Walker, 2015;Kunkel et al, 2020;Parmentier & Fischer, 2012;Sharifzadeh et al, 2019). On this topic, Doyle et al 2020…”

“…Scholars have improved the first version of MABI produced byArai (2014) to include the social media context and consumer engagement. Hambrick and Mahoney (2011) investigated promotion purposes for athletes on Twitter Geurin and McNary (2020). studied the use of Instagram by Olympic athletes to explore their involvement in ambush marketing Kunkel, Doyle, and Na (2020).…”

Towards understanding a football club’s social media network: an exploratory case study of Manchester United

“…Coche (2017) studied Twitter profiles of athletes to analyse how they present themselves on social media using images and photos. Geurin and McNary (2020) From a fans' perspective, Stavros et al (2014) analysed online comments by fans of NBA teams to understand their motivations of engagement. These were found to be generally categorised into passion (e.g., affection for the team), hope (e.g., ambition), esteem (e.g., where comments demonstrate their specialist knowledge and insight) and camaraderie (e.g., defending the team).…”