The Importance of Social Media in Sports Marketing

 By engaging fans via social media, sports rights holders can open new communication channels with their audience that can be measured and valued as a new commercial opportunity with sponsors. Businesses that get involved through sponsorships and social media promotions, meanwhile, benefit from increased brand affinity and loyalty. According to forbes.com With the emergence of social media, sports right holders have opened up new communication channels and value as a new commercial opportunity for sponsors. Businesses that are involved with sponsorships and social media promotions benefit from the increased affinity and loyalty. 

Although social media has become a large window of opportunity, some clubs and organizations are only beginning to use this tactic. One of the worlds largest sports organizations, FC Barcelona, worked with sports marketing agency IMG to examine what value social media adds to its shirt sponsorship rights. Over only one weekend, there were over 60 million impressions of the Qatar Foundations sponsorship of the club kits. “We found there was an extraordinary amount of value that the shirt sponsor of Barcelona was receiving on social media, which wasn’t really factored into the sponsorship,” says Rob Mason, managing director of IMG Consulting, IMG’s advisory and brand strategy and activation division. “Our work there told us that social media is the next great frontier for sports sponsorships. But sports rights holders need to understand their social media value, and sponsors need to know what they want from it.”

sportingnews.com

Cell phones and other technologies have allowed social media to flourish in soccer stadiums such as Liverpool’s Anfield and the Etihad Stadium, home of Manchester City. These soccer clubs offer fans Wi-Fi, enabling not only more interactions at live events but more commercial activity, too. Spectators now have the ability to make additional purchases or seat upgrades, for example, from the venue. The challenge for businesses is to find ways of measuring the value social media offers, beyond simple page views and unique user data. 

Technology has become very important to sports-based organizations whether its ticketing software to optimize the venue's capacity, or stadiums being able to project different advertising boards to different world markets from the same events. These initiatives and many others will be explored as the business of sport series progresses.

-Jackson