Identifying factors affecting the value of advertisements on football clubs' and players' social media: a discrete choice analysis

Abstract

PurposeAdvertisers frequently use social media for interactive and customer-oriented relationship marketing (RM) purposes. Moreover, sports clubs and players have been using their social media accounts to post content of their sponsors and other advertising companies. Such posts create visibility and have value for these advertising companies, something which has not been empirically quantified in the existing literature. Hence, this paper's purpose is to identify the factors or attributes that influence the value of such advertisement posts.Design/methodology/approachA discrete choice approach is used to empirically estimate the utility that sponsorship managers derive from a post advertising their company or product on football clubs' and players' social media.FindingsThe results indicate that more followers, better on-field performance and a lower price significantly increase the advertising company's utility. Moreover, the used social media channel has a significant influence too, since Facebook and Instagram are preferred over Twitter, due to the latter's limited degrees of freedom for advertisers.Research limitations/implicationsConsidering additional factors such as the image fit between sponsor and sponsee and presence on the Chinese social media market offers an interesting avenue for future research.Practical implicationsThe empirical estimates allow commercial managers of clubs and players to derive companies' relative willingness to pay (WTP) for changes in characteristics of advertisements on their social media from the calculated utilities. This information can be used in the pricing decision when social media posts are sold or included in sponsorship packages.Originality/valueThis is the first study applying discrete choice modelling to link social media marketing (SMM) and sports marketing.

The more we post, the better? A comparative analysis of fan engagement on social media profiles of football leagues

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“…YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn). These tools are instrumental in aiding sports managers across various domains, such as fan engagement and sponsorship (Balliauw et al, 2021), branding (Beissel et al, 2022), stakeholder communication (Guzm an et al, 2021), and even entrepreneurship (Ratten, 2023). brands, political entities, clubs, players), it is crucial to understand how football leagues can optimize its use based on their interests, particularly concerning the engagement generated with their social media publications.…”

“…YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn). These tools are instrumental in aiding sports managers across various domains, such as fan engagement and sponsorship (Balliauw et al. , 2021), branding (Beissel et al.…”

Why do fans go to football games? A discrete choice analysis of ticket buyers' preferences

“…This task is repeated several times with different choice sets. Such discrete choice experiments are frequently used to quantify consumer preferences and have been successfully applied in areas such as marketing (Rossi et al, 2012;Train, 2009), transportation (Zijlstra et al, 2019), health care (Luyten et al, 2015), ecology (Fletcher et al, 2015;Melero et al, 2018;Vardakis et al, 2015), environmental economics (Bennett and Blamey, 2001;Torres et al, 2013;Voj a cek et al, 2010), culture (Baldin and Bille, 2018) and sports (Balliauw et al, 2021). The latter paper also studied the economics of football clubs, but, unlike the current paper, it focused on determining the value of social media posts.…”

Análisis de las redes sociales y el compromiso e interacción de los clubes de la Liga Asobal 2020-2023 (Analysis of social networks and Engagement of the clubs of the Asobal League 2020-2023)

“…Habitual es el vínculo entre el patrocinio deportivo y las RRSS como ya manifestó Balliauw et al (2021) o Gil et al (2022. El aumento de la masa social repercute en aspectos importantes como los patrocinadores, quienes precisan que la determinada masa social (fans y seguidores) de la marca o entidad deportiva cuenten con un vínculo emocional (Mastromartino y Naraine, 2022).…”