Do college athletics marketers convert social media growth into ticket sales?

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between growth in social media engagement, as defined by annual percentage increase in Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers, of US college athletics departments and outcome metrics of attendance and ticket revenue. Design/methodology/approach Regression models were developed to determine the amount of variance in dependent variables (attendance and ticket revenue) could be explained by several independent variables, including team success, team history, conference affiliation, Facebook Likes, and Twitter Followers. Four years of data were collected for each variable. Findings The regression models predicted between 53 and 88 percent of the variance among dependent variables. Social media measures, however, were not statistically significant predictors of attendance or ticket revenue. Research limitations/implications The number of Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers were used as a proxy measure of social media engagement. While growth in Likes and Followers are a popular and convenient gauge of social media engagement, they represent a single measure of a multi-faceted construct. Also, data were limited to public university athletics departments, which are required to disclose annual ticket revenue. Findings may not be generalizable to other sport organizations. Practical implications The findings suggest growing social media interactions may not necessarily achieve marketing objectives related to increasing attendance or ticket revenue. Originality/value While numerous studies have examined the impact of social media on sport organizations, no prior studies have attempted to draw empirical connections between social media marketing efforts and revenue measures within sport organizations. This study represents the first to begin to examine this relationship.

Hashmoney: exploring Twitter hashtag use as a secondary ticket market price determinant

“…Few studies connecting Twitter and sport have attempted to assess the value of Twitter hashtags as a marketing and sales tool. Popp and McEvoy (2014) found university athletic department so far unable to demonstrate the financial impact of social media on their bottom line. Studies by Ciuffo et al (2014), and Abeza and O'Reilly (2014) demonstrated that Twitter is less effective in sports marketing efforts than other forms of engagement, whereas Watkins (2014) found Twitter had a positive impact on brand equity for NBA fans.…”

“…Proponents of social media's use as marketing and sales tools suggest it can help increase fan engagement (Tomko, 2011) and sell tickets (Steinbach, 2010). However, analyses of sport social media and sales demonstrate that claim has so far been difficult to demonstrate empirically (Popp and McEvoy, 2014). The non-curated construct of Twitter means that marketers need to be mindful of efforts by advocates to 'hijack' their marketing hashtags for completely different purposes (Fathi, 2009), or create counter-marketing hashtags to combat their stated business goals (Burton et al, 2013).…”

“…Since social media has become a cultural giant, organisations have sought to leverage that connectivity into financial gain, something that has proved elusive to demonstrate (Akar and Topcu, 2011;Shadkam and O'Hara, 2013), and evaluate (Groza et al, 2012;James et al, 2013). Within sport, Popp and McEvoy (2014) found that university athletic departments have so far been unable to leverage their investment in social media campaigns into financial return. Studies of efficiencies and sales figure maximisation in the secondary ticket market have included many variables that affect price -but have not included an evaluation of the relationship between social media activity and prices on the secondary ticket market.…”

Conceptualising and measuring social media engagement: A systematic literature review

“…of comments, No. of shares Facebook Popp et al ( 2017 ) Quantitative Metrics No. of Facebook Followers, No.…”

Re-examining a model for measuring Facebook interaction and relationship quality

“…However, little is known about how social networking sites impact purchases in sport (Hong and Rhee, 2016). In one study, Popp et al (2017) determined the number of Facebook page likes and Twitter followers did not increase ticket revenues or attendance, thus suggesting it might not be an effective sales tool. Conversely, other studies advocate that teams with higher revenues have more Facebook fans (Parganas et al, 2017), and teams with more Facebook fans have higher operating incomes and attendance (Achen, 2015), which provide correlational evidence that a relationship exists, but do not try to determine if consumer behavior is impacted by interacting with teams on social networks.…”