Fan motives for interacting on social media – the example of the International Table Tennis Federation and Facebook

Abstract

A B S T R AC TSocial media has become an important tool for sport organisations to interact with fans. In particular for sports that have smaller marketing budgets and that do not receive mainstream media coverage on a daily basis, social media platforms provide unique communication and marketing opportunities to overcome such challenges. This study investigates the motives of fans to communicate on the Facebook page of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). It is the first study that focuses on the use of social media in the context of an international sport federation. Knowledge about the gratifications sought by fans while interacting on social media is important for organisations to develop more customised online content, as this may help to reach further goals such as maintaining public interest, reinforcing brand awareness or developing closer relationships with stakeholders. By identifying eight categories in our data that help understand the motives for interacting on Facebook, we extend the academic understanding of sport fans' motives in the context of social media. Among the most frequent fans' motives were the desire to demonstrate expertise and express emotional attachment as well as to seek and provide information. Based on our findings, we derive implications that can be relevant for managers of (niche) sport organisations with limited financial and personal resources. The first and most straightforward recommendation is to appeal to fans' motives when interacting on social media. Making sport fans feel that their voices are heard is also crucial for increasing engagement and trust as well as strengthening relationships.

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“…Most authors focus on the nature of social media (Abeza et al, 2015). In this matter, a distinction can be made between scholars who focus on the use of social media at an organisational meso-level within professional teams (Miranda et al, 2014;Pronschinske et al, 2012) or national SFs (Abeza and O'Reilly, 2014;Belot et al, 2016) versus scholars who investigate the micro-level motives and attitudes of users and consumers (Schubert and Seyffert, 2017). National SFs and professional teams have been the most common subject of investigation.…”

“…Finally, FCs are economic oriented sports providers that aim to increase their sales revenues. Yet, although their profit orientations and organisational characteristics are not the same, they do experience competition from one another (Schubert and Seyffert, 2017). To cope with the highly competitive sports environment, sports organisations strive to innovate by, amongst others, committing and engaging with their community through social media in order to retain, and preferably augment it.…”

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