This piece is the Editorial from Volume 2, Issue 2 of the Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal
Over the last decade, the world has seen the emergence and dramatic growth in social media. Such has been the impact of social media, that its pioneers and innovators are now heralded and revered as icons of our age. The sport industry has often been at the forefront of developments; for instance, The Chain, which was part of Nike’s Joga Bonito campaign launched at the time of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, was an early showcase for the way in which consumers could be engaged to generate content for a marketing communications campaign. More recently, several sports teams have begun to actively employ Facebook to the extent that there some organisations now compile sporting league tables of ‘most followed teams’.
According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media is "a group of Internet-based applications that are built on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Among the most commonly used and prominent forms of social media are Twitter, Facebook and You Tube. In addition to these forms of social media, there have also been several other significant developments, such as the Huffington Post which is an online newspaper with content generated by its readers.
In one respect, the impact of social media on sport was inevitable, as it has long been held that the relationship between sport and the media is a symbiotic one. Indeed, as the dynamism of the media landscape has intensified over the last two decades, the symbiosis between sport and the media has arguably strengthened as the technology and product portfolios of global media corporations have changed. Accompanying these changes, there have been simultaneous changes in many countries such as the growth of a consumer culture. These changes have, for instance, enhanced the voice of fans; hence, there has been a significant growth in radio phone-in programmes, fanzines, and specialist television programmes.
Yet in spite of the symbiosis, the established relationship been sport and the media has essentially been a bi-directional one, with the media located at the nexus of a network that includes fans, customers, teams, events, venues and governing bodies. At this fundamental level, the emergence of social media has re-configured the nature, scale, and flows within the network. This is already having profound effects on sport, not least in the way that social media enhances democracy, speed and immediacy across the media space.
As a result, instead of fans being distant customers, mediums like Twitter have enabled them to gain direct access to athletes, players, coaches and managers. At the same time, teams and clubs have been able to open themselves up to the world, providing insights they have never been able to provide before. At the same time, sports’ commercial partners have actively begun to leverage social media as a way of activating their relationships with the sector. Even in the case of athletes, many use social media as a means of engaging with fans and as a way of publicly expressing views they might otherwise be unable to express, while some even use social media as a signalling device (as in the case of some professional footballers who have tweeted the availability for transfer on Twitter).
The rapidity of social media’s appearance in the sport industry landscape poses some interesting issues for academic researchers, indeed for applied researchers in the field too. The fields of business and management are replete with research opportunities, especially in terms of conceiving and understanding the new media environment in which sport functions. Researchers should, however, make a cautionary note: fast changing, rapidly evolving technologies can pose some problems, such as the way in which a phenomenon might significantly change over a period of analysis.
Notwithstanding the difficulties in researching social media, there are nevertheless still numerous areas that are likely to be of interest to, and be potentially fruitful for, researchers. Conceiving of the role that social media plays in the business and management of sport would appear to be an obvious and immediate opportunity for researchers working in this field. Beyond this, analysing the strategic (and tactical) role of various social media would inevitably emphasise some interesting issues. For instance, in marketing there is already a widespread acceptance that Twitter and Facebook are effective mechanisms for acquiring and retaining customers. Opinion is still divided nevertheless about how to monetise this form of engagement.
At the same time, it is often claimed that social media is changing the way in which sport organisations operate, by opening them up to their external stakeholders, in a way never previously experienced. For those with an interest in sporting governance or corporate social responsibility, this poses some interesting questions, not least whether social media can affect or has affected a change a change in the way sport organisations operate. Accepting that a change has taken place (or is at least in progress) implies that there are some interesting studies to be undertaken that examine to change process, as well as the outcomes of any such changes. Furthermore, as the dual agenda of good governance and corporate social responsibility continue to prevail, understanding the contribution that social media makes to both would make for an interesting study.
There are several other areas of business and management in which social media in sport could be researched and analysed; for example, in organisation behaviour, management information systems, human resource management and so forth. But for the purposes of this one of the more intriguing aspects of social media is the way in which it potentially serves as a signalling mechanism. In recent case from English football, a Premier League player used Twitter to signal his availability for transfer to another club. Such a move was highly unusual, circumventing the normal process for alerting clubs to one’s availability, while also negating the role that agents might normal fulfil in such situations. Why social media is being used in this way, and how it influences labour market dynamics, signalling activities, human resource management strategy and the role of intermediaries all represent highly intriguing research opportunities.
While some may dismiss the growing prominence of social media as merely fad and fashion, it rapid proliferation strongly suggests otherwise. As such, there are clear issues for sport, which should be embraced by sport business and management researchers, and which should therefore stimulate new and exciting research themes in sport. One hopes that readers of this journal will become part of this important new area of research and duly make appropriate future submissions to our journal.
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