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Becoming more than an athlete: Developing an athlete's personal brand using strategic philanthropy Research Question: The current research examined the effect of an athlete promoting his philanthropic efforts to his Instagram followers. Specifically, we assessed how adopting this strategy impacted his followers' perceptions of, and level of fandom towards, his personal brand.Research Methods: We used a longitudinal research design including a pre-intervention survey, an intervention, and a post-intervention survey separated by a six-month interval. We analysed free-thought brand associations, perceptions of athlete philanthropy, and levels of fandom reported by an athlete's Instagram followers from two independent samples (NT1 = 165; NT2 = 172) and a longitudinal sample (N = 32). Results and Findings:Results indicated that the athlete's promotion of his philanthropic activities positively impacted his brand image. This change was characterised by a shift from the prominence of sport-specific brand attributes to perceptions of overall character. In addition, followers reported increased perceptions of the athlete's engagement in philanthropy, and stronger levels of overall fandom towards the athlete.Research Implications: Findings demonstrated the promotion of philanthropic activities impacted the brand associations consumers linked to the athlete's personal brand, and strengthened the overall connection between the athlete and his followers. Findings extend athlete branding knowledge and provide practical implications to inform how athletes and agents may implement social media brand management.

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Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) is the apprehension stemming from missing out on social interactions, and it is a salient motive for sport consumption. Sport fans are active and engaged on social media, and they give Continuous Partial Attention (CPA) to other screens, displaying online behaviors such as accessing team social media channels while watching live sports on screens. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were performed to examine the role of FoMO, with mediations of social media involvement and CPA, on fans' online engagement with sports teams' social media. Participants ( N = 328) demonstrated that fans with FoMO have a desire to continuously connect with other fans while watching live sports on screens, which leads to engaging in social media activities related to the sport team. This study provides theoretical and practical implications related to sport fans' social media information-seeking behaviors and for social media managers of sports teams, including the operations of live broadcasts during sports games.