Look Who’s Talking—Athletes on Twitter: A Case Study

Abstract

This case study investigated athletes’ use of a specific social-media platform—Twitter. Social media are a rising force in marketing and have been fully embraced by the sport industry, with teams, leagues, coaches, athletes, and managers establishing presences. Primarily these presences have been focused on Twitter, a microblogging site that allows users to post their personal thoughts in 140 characters or less. Athletes, in particular, have engaged in tweeting at a fast pace, which raises the question, What are they saying? This case study investigated the tweets of athletes over a 7-d period in an attempt to answer that question. The findings indicate that athletes are talking predominantly about their personal lives and responding to fans’ queries through Twitter. The results indicate that Twitter is a powerful tool for increasing fan–athlete interaction.

Game Changer: A Case Study of Social-Media Strategy in Big Ten Athletic Departments

“…Hambrick et al (2011) found that tweets (posts made from the social media website Twitter) sent for interactivity or divertive purposes accounted for 62% of the total tweets examined in the research. Pegoraro (2011) found comparable results in the context of sporting leagues, which devoted at least 17% of their tweets to fan interaction. At the collegiate level, such back stage interaction can be limited due to rules set in place by individual athletic programs and coaching staffs.…”

“…This back stage sensation is capable of drawing fans in and enhancing the ties they feel to the teams and athletes they cheer for. The presumed transparency offered by social media is able to draw a personal connection that traditional media often lack (Pegoraro, 2011). The sense that an individual is the recipient of exclusive or never-before-seen information is often precisely what a hungry fan desires.…”

“…Several studies have been conducted to analyze the content or numbers of posts from athletic departments, conferences or professional athletes, or have attempted to gauge fan interaction with such posts (Clavio, 2011;Hambrick, Simmons, Greenhalgh, & Greenwell 2011;Miloch et al, 2011;Pegoraro, 2011). However, no studies currently exist that investigate the strategy behind athletic departments' social media efforts.…”

Success of Mixed Martial Arts Video Topics on YouTube

“…Those included problems why people seek sport content online (Carlson, Rosenberger & Muthaly 2003;Hur, Ko & Valacich, 2007;Hong & Raney, 2007;Seo & Green 2008;Clavio & Kian, 2010) or use specific forms of social media (Clavio & Cooper 2010). Another intriguing subject was related to content itself, detecting characteristic and aim of a message (Kassing & Sanderson, 2010;Hambrick et al, 2010, Pegoraro, 2010. In most of these attempts uses and gratification (McQuail 1984) and disposition theories (Bryant & Zillmann 2002) were utilized as a research background.…”

Explaining the Number of Social Media Fans for North American and European Professional Sports Clubs with Determinants of Their Financial Value

“…Hambrick et al (2010) and Pegoraro (2010) examined athletes' use of Twitter. The two studies each relied on six categories derived from previous research (Clavio 2008;Funk et al 2002;Seo and Green 2008;Wolfradt and Doll 2001): interactivity (responding to fans), diversion (relating to personal life and pop culture or landmark reference), information sharing (relating to business life excluding promoting products), content (links to pictures, videos and Web sites), fanship (other sport or athlete reference), and promotional (promoting products).…”