99SYN14528_SocialSportsFanDoc-V2
99SYN14528_SocialSportsFanDoc-V2
99SYN14528_SocialSportsFanDoc-V2
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Sports Fans,<br />
Social Media and<br />
the Millennial Myth<br />
#socialsportsfan<br />
socialsportsfan.info
What motivates<br />
sports fans<br />
to use social<br />
media?<br />
Rarely does a moment go by without<br />
the ‘Top 10 social tips of the day’<br />
dropping into your feed…<br />
‘Social Gurus’ come at us relentlessly<br />
with hot new widgets that achieve<br />
unparalleled engagement… Wired tells<br />
us what’s ‘wired’ before we’ve got our<br />
heads round what’s ‘expired’…<br />
and global events from presidential<br />
elections to World Cup finals are<br />
measured by their tweet-count.<br />
The world’s biggest brands tirelessly strive to deliver rich<br />
digital experiences that stimulate conversation, ignite<br />
interaction and create new communities.<br />
This is not what Millennial sports fans want.<br />
We have a new ‘front page’, or in<br />
sport’s case, a new back page.<br />
Sport is never far from the epicentre of<br />
social discussion. Nor are Millennials.<br />
As sports marketing people, we are<br />
fascinated by the power and potential<br />
of social media. Yet there is shockingly<br />
little publicised research into what<br />
motivates sports fans (let alone a hefty<br />
chunk of the human race) to use it.<br />
Our social strategies are often<br />
shaped around unsubstantiated<br />
insights, convenient assumptions<br />
and marketing myths.<br />
Here, we lay bare the findings of<br />
#socialsportsfan. We put evidence<br />
around the importance of social media<br />
in the lives of sports fans and expose<br />
assumptions that are often made about<br />
what sports fans want from social.<br />
Our goal is to inspire a smarter breed<br />
of socially supercharged sports marketing<br />
where innovation is driven by real<br />
consumer needs, not the marketing<br />
industry’s need to ‘do something new’.
Some<br />
inconvenient truths<br />
Our findings are presented<br />
across two territories:<br />
Our research into what motivates Millennial sports fans to use social media<br />
has exposed some inconvenient truths for an industry more easily seduced<br />
by creativity than consumer behaviour:<br />
- It is not interactivity and rich content experiences that Millennials want<br />
from social. It’s real-time content, immediately and easily accessed.<br />
- It is not the most official and trustworthy content that Millennials want<br />
from social. It’s a rich breadth of perspectives – they don’t care where it<br />
comes from.<br />
1. The social love triangle<br />
Brands craving ownership are muscling<br />
themselves out of the perfect threesome.<br />
- Sports fans are insatiable social animals<br />
- Social grows fanship… Fanship grows social<br />
- Sports fans are creatures of social habit<br />
2. The great content crisis<br />
Brands prioritising creativity over effectiveness<br />
are missing the easy win.<br />
- I want it all and I want it now<br />
- Authenticity is the real deal<br />
- The future is opinionated<br />
- It is not recognition and reinforcement of their identity that Millennials<br />
want from social. It’s much more ‘to me’ than ‘from me’.<br />
However, our findings do reinforce the often-ignored reality that Millennials are not<br />
one homogeneous group. The younger end does express a desire to interact,<br />
to share, to express their opinion.<br />
All this has great implications for how brands and rights holders think about social<br />
media and the point at which creativity kills effectiveness.<br />
Our findings are based on<br />
over 500 Millennial respondents<br />
(relatively even male/female split) and have been broken out across three groups:<br />
1. Massive Sports Fans<br />
2. Average Sports Fans<br />
3. Small Sports Fans
1.<br />
The social<br />
love triangle<br />
Sponsorship gives a brand a hot lead to a hungry crowd. A way into a warm relationship.<br />
That crowd is as easy to get to through social media as it is in a stadium or on TV.<br />
Gathered around their passions, sports fans are alive and sharing across the social web,<br />
week in, week out.<br />
Sports fans typically consume content in simple, ritualised ways. They are creatures<br />
of habit. The scene is set for a match made in heaven… for fans, brands and rights holders<br />
to come together in perfect harmony, through social content.<br />
But often a brand will ignore the sports fan’s social habits – the obvious places to find and feed<br />
them – and focus instead on enticing fans somewhere different, with something different. This is<br />
usually in the name of ‘creativity’ and ‘ownership’. Of course, both are valuable, but not when<br />
they cannibalise engagement.<br />
Our #socialsportsfan findings encourage brands to avoid making assumptions about what fans<br />
want and to work with existing habits and rituals rather than try to change them.
As fanship grows, so does total time spent<br />
on sport based social media<br />
1.1 Insatiable social animals<br />
Let’s just put this one to bed: Millennial sports fans love social media. No surprises there.<br />
But there’s more to it than that. The bigger the sports fan, the more time they<br />
spend on social in general… and the more of this time is devoted to sport.<br />
3.5<br />
3<br />
2.5<br />
Time on<br />
social media<br />
Time on<br />
sport based<br />
social media<br />
Throughout this research we cut our findings across ‘Small Fans’, ‘Average Fans’<br />
and ‘Massive Fans’. And also by male and female.<br />
Male Massive Fans report spending 2.5 hours on social media a day, with<br />
72% of that time on sports content. This is compared to female Small Fans who<br />
spend the same number of hours a day on social, but with only 21% devoted to sport.<br />
Hours/Day<br />
2<br />
1.5<br />
1<br />
0.5<br />
This is clearly an opportunity for great traction. But do brands and rights holders<br />
really make the most of it? Let’s dig deeper…<br />
0<br />
21% 21% 38% 41% 53% 72%<br />
FEMALE<br />
MALE FEMALE MALE FEMALE MALE<br />
SMALL<br />
FAN<br />
AVERAGE<br />
FAN<br />
Level of Fanship/Gender<br />
MASSIVE<br />
FAN<br />
“The main social media I probably<br />
use is YouTube, and from there you<br />
find names, and that leads you to<br />
Twitter, and then they’ll probably<br />
advertise their Facebook and then<br />
you’ll be linked back round to<br />
YouTube to see more videos.<br />
– Robin, dancer.<br />
“<br />
In order to understand sports fans’ usage of social<br />
media, we first need to look at how long they spend<br />
on it. Respondents were asked to estimate how<br />
many hours per day they spend on social media,<br />
both for general use and specifically for sport.<br />
By cross-tabulating these results<br />
against their level of fanship, not only do we see<br />
that the larger sports fans use social media<br />
more in general per day, but they also spend a<br />
greater amount of that time consuming sport-based<br />
social content: overall, 64% of massive fans’ social<br />
media usage was devoted to sport.<br />
Interestingly, when delving deeper into the data<br />
and looking at gender-specific findings, we found<br />
that on average male sports fans spend 22% more<br />
of their total social media time on sport than<br />
female fans. This gender split becomes even more<br />
visible when fanship is taken into consideration,<br />
with ‘massive’ male fans spending 72% of their<br />
social media time on sporting content, compared<br />
to just 53% for female massive fans. Although these<br />
are perhaps predictable findings, they help to support<br />
the notion that sports fans’ interest levels are reflected<br />
in their usage. Furthermore it cements the importance<br />
of massive fans, particularly males, as a valuable<br />
audience for sponsors.<br />
Male Massive<br />
Sports Fans spend<br />
72% of their social<br />
media time on sportbased<br />
content
The younger the sports fan, the greater the effect<br />
social media has on their fanship<br />
22-25yrs<br />
17%<br />
18-21yrs<br />
34%<br />
“The thing I think Cross Fit does very<br />
well with social media is that they are<br />
very quick to pick up the athletes,<br />
and give them a chance to shine so<br />
you can share and experience that.<br />
– John, Cross Fit athlete.<br />
“<br />
16-17<br />
18-21<br />
22-25<br />
16-17yrs<br />
49%<br />
1.2 Social grows fanship…<br />
fanship grows social<br />
Our findings point to a symbiotic relationship between sports fanship and social media usage,<br />
at least amongst the younger members of the Millennial demographic. The more they use<br />
social media to engage with their passions, the more of a fan they become… and<br />
the more of a fan they become, the more they use social to feed that fanship.<br />
This should encourage brands and rights holders to think of socially supercharged sponsorship<br />
as not only a great way to engage with consumers now, but to nurture them for the future:<br />
content is an investment in growing a hungrier consumer.<br />
Sponsorship is typically a long-term game, with a multi-year calendar built around a season or<br />
the build-up to a big event. This gives a brand time to nurture an audience that seems to naturally<br />
grow through social.<br />
But where are these fans gathering and growing?<br />
In order to understand the effect of social media on<br />
fanship, we asked participants whether they were a<br />
bigger fan of the sports/teams/athletes they liked<br />
because of social media. 49% of 16-17 year-olds<br />
agreed that they were, compared to 40% of 18-21<br />
year-olds and only 28% of those in the 22-25 bracket.<br />
This suggests that the younger the fan, the more social<br />
media affects their level of fanship. This poses interesting<br />
questions: is this age skew because those 18-21 yearolds<br />
are too young to have ever really been consciously<br />
interested in sports like rugby, football or tennis without<br />
the facilitation of social media?<br />
Face-to-face interviews with sports fans offered up<br />
another possibility. Cross Fit fan-athletes spoke of the<br />
‘sense of community’ that they feel in their online sports<br />
circles, and added that social media plays a key role<br />
in enabling them to endorse what is a relatively new<br />
sport, to which they want to attract more participants<br />
and fans. They noted that whilst fans of traditional sports<br />
(like rugby) may use social media as ‘one of many’<br />
platforms for discussion, fans of less traditional sports<br />
(like Cross Fit) don’t have this luxury, and champion<br />
social media as a main source of information and tips.<br />
Content provided by teams or individuals has therefore<br />
been pivotal to establishing fanship around these<br />
‘non-traditional’ sports.<br />
49% of 16-17 yearolds<br />
agree that<br />
they are a bigger<br />
sports fan because<br />
of social media<br />
compared to 28%<br />
of 22-25 year olds
As fanship increases, Twitter overtakes Facebook as the<br />
sports fan’s most used social platform<br />
“I mainly use Facebook for<br />
Arsenal and football, but I’ll use<br />
Instagram where I usually follow<br />
brands like Adidas and Puma.<br />
– Khash, football fan.<br />
“<br />
WWW. WWW. WWW.<br />
SMALL<br />
FAN<br />
AVERAGE<br />
FAN<br />
MASSIVE<br />
FAN<br />
1.3 Creatures of social habit<br />
Level of Fanship/Gender<br />
Sponsorship agencies have long claimed that their ‘knowledge of fans’ is what gives them the edge<br />
over other agencies. This may or may not be true. Let’s face it, ad agencies do produce some pretty<br />
tasty 60-second sport spots.<br />
There is, however, a real need to understand what makes fans tick (and click) when it comes to social<br />
media. The content that really flies is the stuff that taps into exactly what fans are thinking<br />
and feeling at any given moment. Truly insightful content puts their thoughts into words,<br />
pictures and film… and helps them express themselves better than they could themselves.<br />
But getting social content right isn’t just about understanding the intricacies of fans’ needs.<br />
It’s about where and when to publish this content. Those who create content are increasingly<br />
responsible for the reach and engagement it achieves. No longer is this the sole preserve of the<br />
media agency.<br />
Add to this fans’ increasing desire for real-time content that drops within seconds of the live moment<br />
and you move towards a one-stop-social-shop that needs to create, publish and promote content in<br />
a single movement.<br />
Fortunately, Millennial sports fans are creatures of social habit. They know what they like and they<br />
know where to find it. Brands should think hard before they opt for ‘build and they will come’ over<br />
‘fish where the fish are’. Moving into section two, we look at who is feeding fans the content they<br />
want. What are the cornerstones of compelling content?<br />
51% of Massive<br />
Sports Fans use<br />
Twitter at least<br />
once a day<br />
Using a scale of 1 (never) to 7 (multiple times a day),<br />
respondents were asked how frequently they used<br />
a number of platforms (both on- and offline) to fuel<br />
their desire for sport. The results showed that YouTube,<br />
Twitter and Facebook massively dominate sports fans’<br />
consumption, with 51% using Twitter, 49% using websites<br />
and 43% using Facebook daily or multiple<br />
times a day. This trend is magnified as fanship increases.<br />
On the other hand, platforms with a comparatively<br />
new digital presence showed dramatically lower usage<br />
across all levels of fanship, with 97% using Pinterest<br />
and 69% using Vine weekly or less. Whilst this certainly<br />
does not suggest these channels should be ignored<br />
(particularly as they have the ability to be integrated<br />
into content on more popular platforms), it does imply<br />
a hierarchy among social media in terms of traction<br />
and engagement.
2.<br />
The great<br />
content crisis<br />
So, it’s easy to find Millennial sports fans who are hungry for great sports content. But what<br />
do you feed them when you’ve found them? What do they consider great content to be?<br />
It looks like brands might be overcomplicating things. According to Millennial sports fans,<br />
what brands publish is less engaging than what teams and talent put out.<br />
This does not add up when you look at the dramatic difference between a brand’s strategic,<br />
creative and social media resources and that of an individual athlete or even a rights holder’s<br />
marketing team.<br />
Our findings suggest that brands’ desire for creativity may be getting in the way<br />
of the simple, real and raw content that fans crave.
Across all levels of fans, motivation for using social<br />
is strikingly simple; everyone wants immediacy and ease<br />
of access to information. As fan level increases, demand<br />
for a richer breadth of information also increases<br />
“You can be watching Sky Sports<br />
News and hear something you<br />
already know because it’s been on<br />
Twitter for 30 minutes to an hour.<br />
– Niall, athlete.<br />
“<br />
Reason for using<br />
2.1 I want it all and I want it now<br />
Smartphone-packing sports fans move fast. So does social. Today, content must be quick<br />
too. ‘Real-time’ is possibly the best example of where brands are getting content right.<br />
This new trend for publishing branded content from social command centres within minutes<br />
of the action is in perfect keeping with what Millennials want.<br />
Immediate access is of massive importance. Wrapped up in this is the need for this access<br />
to be ‘easy’. Content that drops into the palm of their hand, through the channels they already<br />
use, when they most expect it. Don’t make me work: work for me.<br />
Our findings report something a little deeper as a driver of content consumption: ‘breadth of<br />
content’. Millennial sports fans don’t just want one angle on the story, they want all<br />
the angles. They suck up the range of perspectives available and make up their<br />
own minds.<br />
So, brands need to be fast and stand out. This is where creativity counts. Creativity that<br />
doesn’t get in the way of the content, but elevates it. Give them what they want. Give it fast.<br />
And give it beautifully packaged.<br />
Having found out what type of content sports fans<br />
found most interesting, we are now able to evaluate<br />
why this is the case.<br />
Respondents were asked to measure on a scale of<br />
1 (‘not a driver’) to 5 (‘main driver’) how much certain<br />
aspects drive their sport-based social media usage.<br />
Results showed that immediacy of information (79%<br />
main driver) and ease of access to information (78%<br />
main driver) were the key drivers for social media use.<br />
Fans want real-time content and they want to find it,<br />
fast. The need for a richer breadth of information was<br />
the next biggest driver, and became increasingly<br />
important as fanship levels grew. This suggests that<br />
the ability to understand all sides of an issue, and have<br />
all the facts possible, is essential for those Massive<br />
Sports Fans.<br />
78% of sports fans<br />
state that ease<br />
of access and<br />
immediacy of<br />
information are key<br />
drivers for social<br />
media use
Content from teams and athletes is deemed most engaging<br />
with sponsors and governing bodies lagging behind<br />
“You see an individual MMA fighter,<br />
and he’ll say ‘Look, I’ve done this’<br />
and show you a clip. And you’re just<br />
there like, that’s awesome, I want<br />
to follow you and see everything<br />
you do from now on.<br />
“<br />
– Chris, Cross Fit athlete.<br />
2.2 Authenticity is the real deal<br />
Millennial sports fans want a rich breadth of content, but they also want it to be authentic.<br />
What does this actually mean? Our interviews point towards a desire for something ‘real’,<br />
something that ‘gets me inside the game!’.<br />
‘Behind the scenes’ and ‘getting closer to the action’ are terms that have graced almost<br />
every sponsorship brief ever written. Yet social media has opened fans up to what direct,<br />
personal access can really look and feel like. Today, Millennials chat with their idols and<br />
flick through the holiday snaps of their heroes on a daily basis.<br />
Those we spoke to report a dramatic disinterest in the content published by brands versus<br />
that given by a sports fan’s favourite teams and talent. Less than 15% found branded<br />
content to be engaging.<br />
Is this another example of brands missing the point? Do brands package and polish content<br />
so hard that it loses its authentic edge?<br />
In order to understand how to make the most of<br />
content on these platforms, it is essential to understand<br />
which content sports fans find most engaging.<br />
To do this we concentrated on content from four<br />
sports-based categories (brand/sponsor, sports<br />
governing body, athletes/sports person and teams)<br />
and asked participants how engaging they found them<br />
on a scale of 1 (not engaging) to 5 (very engaging).<br />
Of the four categories, brands and governing bodies<br />
were found to be equally uninteresting, with less than<br />
15% of people finding the content they produced to<br />
be engaging. However, men and women were split<br />
on what content they did find of interest. Whilst men<br />
tended to prefer the content provided by teams,<br />
women found that produced by talent (athletes/sports<br />
people) to be the most engaging online. For both,<br />
the level of online engagement with these favoured<br />
mediums strengthens as the level of fanship increases.<br />
The preference for content from teams or talent may<br />
be due to the fact that they simply appear as a more<br />
authentic source than brands: why go to a third party<br />
when you could hear it straight from the horse’s<br />
mouth? Furthermore, they provide the in-depth<br />
knowledge which sports fans crave. From our<br />
interviews, we heard that sports fans ‘want to see<br />
what these top-level athletes are up to’ behind the<br />
scenes and in training because ‘that’s where<br />
non-traditional sports athletes – like MMA fighters –<br />
invite you to engage more’. Another added that they<br />
specifically look out for ‘interviews with the manager and<br />
players’ of their favourite teams on social media feeds<br />
for extra insight into what’s going on. Fans are looking<br />
for the detailed insights which teams and talent can<br />
offer, and which many brands do not.<br />
Less than 15%<br />
of sports fans<br />
find brands’<br />
social media<br />
content engaging
The younger the fan, the more likely they are to express<br />
their opinion through social media<br />
2.3 The future is opinionated<br />
“I use it to get across things<br />
which I want to say. It’s nice to be<br />
able to say “This is what I think.”<br />
– Niall, athlete.<br />
“<br />
Desire to express opinion through social media<br />
‘Social Exchange Theory’ suggests that individuals engage in social interaction in order to gain some<br />
sort of social reward or sense of community. According to the Dual-factor Model, Facebook use<br />
is motivated by two needs: belonging and self-presentation and a study into the social influences in<br />
the use of Twitter can be divided into two aspects: social benefits and social pressures to comply.<br />
Our research suggests that these theories hold two myths about the primary motivations for sports<br />
fans’ use of social media:<br />
- firstly, that sports fans want to interact with content or enter into online debate.<br />
- secondly, that sports fan use social media to increase their sense of belonging.<br />
It appears that the need to engage with social media content, to endorse content, share opinions<br />
and participate in conversation is not a large driver for Millennial sports fans.<br />
However, it is clear from our research that within the Millennial sports fan group, those currently in the<br />
younger 16-21 age range do engage more. Crucially, this is the same age range whose fanship is<br />
most affected by social media.<br />
This trend highlights that even within the ‘Millennial’ group there are important differences<br />
in behaviour. Furthermore, it suggests that as these young sports fans grow up, we<br />
can expect a greater level of interaction across social media as a whole, as well as the<br />
increased fanship that goes hand in hand with it.<br />
This is of vital importance to a brand’s social content strategy when considering this younger<br />
Millennial now and in the future.<br />
16-17 year olds 18-21 year olds 22-25 year olds<br />
The majority of participants stated that they preferred<br />
to be passive in their consumption of social media:<br />
there was no real ‘pull’ to show that sports fans<br />
use social media as a means to publicise their<br />
opinions, contrary to common belief. One fan noted<br />
that whilst they follow and check pages every day,<br />
they were admittedly ‘reluctant to comment as it’s<br />
on a public platform’ (Khash). This may be due to<br />
the increased awareness around privacy. Indeed,<br />
95% of respondents said they were aware that they<br />
are making a public statement about themselves<br />
when posting on social media.<br />
However, responses showed that both bigger fans<br />
and younger fans were more willing to be opinionated<br />
online, corresponding to their increased levels of<br />
engagement which we saw in the previous section.<br />
Once again this highlights the necessity of identifying<br />
the strata within what has traditionally been seen<br />
as a single homogenous group. Whilst lesser fans<br />
are more interested in consuming content, the larger<br />
fans are naturally more engaged and want content<br />
that creates discussion and a breadth of opinion.<br />
Brands need to cater to differences such as this in<br />
order for customers to find their content engaging.<br />
Furthermore, compared to other elements (e.g. music,<br />
clothing, company you keep) 65% of fans considered<br />
their online sporting identity to be the most reflective<br />
element of their offline identity. Clubs and societies<br />
associated with were 53% reflective, whereas the rest<br />
all showed at below average. This may be due to the<br />
nature of the interest itself: for example, whilst music<br />
tastes are extremely personal and therefore easy for<br />
people to criticise, sport is inherently more collective.<br />
It therefore feels ‘safer’ to showcase that element of<br />
our identity through social media.<br />
16-17 year-olds<br />
are twice as likely<br />
to be opinionated<br />
on social media as<br />
26-19 year-olds
Busting the<br />
millennial myth<br />
At the absolute core of our findings lie three simple truths:<br />
1. Sports fans are easily accessed, engaged and grown through social media.<br />
2. Sports fans grow when they’re fed ‘authentic’ content, from a variety of sources.<br />
3. Sports fans are typically hugely underwhelmed by the social content brands currently publish.<br />
So what are brands doing wrong? Why are these strategic and creative powerhouses<br />
underperforming against teams and talent?<br />
Firstly, too often brands prioritise ownership of communities over dropping branded<br />
content into existing communities, including those owned by rights holders. There is,<br />
of course, room for both to work together.<br />
Secondly, too often brands prioritise innovation over effectiveness. The ‘creativity vs<br />
effectiveness’ debate is rumbling across the whole marketing industry, not just<br />
sponsorship. A number of luminaries delivered keynotes at Cannes 2014 that warned<br />
of the poisoned chalice of ‘digital’: so many new ways to engage with consumers,<br />
in the hands of agencies that would much rather win a Lion than report real engagement<br />
or a strong sales uplift.<br />
Brands are relying too heavily on the two key components of the Millennial Myth as the strategy<br />
behind social activation, these being that:<br />
- The idea that Millennials all crave rich interactive experiences that enable them to<br />
express their opinions, reinforce their identities, make new friends and ‘belong’ to<br />
new communities is simply not true. Most don’t. Most simply use social as another<br />
broadcast channel.<br />
- Millennials are one homogeneous group, united by a dominant range of behaviours<br />
and needs. Clearly this is ridiculous when talking about a group that reaches from late<br />
teens to early 30s.<br />
Perhaps the most forward-facing insight of #socialsportsfan is that younger Millennial sports fans<br />
do have different motivations for using social media from older Millennials. They are, perhaps, the<br />
true social generation. They do want to interact, they do want to share, they do want to express<br />
their opinions and they do want to ‘belong’. And their fanship does grow as a result.<br />
These are rich insights for brands and rights holders looking to take the effectiveness<br />
of sponsorship to the next level in the age of the social sports fan.
Mind the gap<br />
“Few subjects are more hotly debated across the sports marketing community than social media.<br />
From the ‘power’ of a Premiership player’s tweet to the ‘fickleness’ of fans that don’t care where<br />
content comes from, as long as it’s quick. Discussion is big, broad and rolling.<br />
You would think that with so many questions being asked by an industry that claims to crave clarity,<br />
that research would be rife. Not so. Each day our feeds bulge with case study round-ups, top ten<br />
tips and indecipherable infographics that fan the flames of confusion. Typically, ‘insight’ focuses on<br />
what is new and big, rather than what works and why.<br />
Understanding what motivates people is the bedrock of worthwhile innovation and creativity. Our<br />
recent work with real-time social content threw light on what motivates sports fans to follow and<br />
share. This heightened our hunger for more, but when we looked for findings, few could be found.<br />
In collaboration with Loughborough University’s School of Business and Economics, we set out<br />
to lay bare the discoveries and debate that will inevitably erupt in response to the question,<br />
‘What motivates sports fans to use social media?’”<br />
Josh Robinson<br />
Head of Digital<br />
Synergy Sponsorship<br />
Academic rigour<br />
“One of the major issues facing marketing professionals is in the understanding of how social media<br />
sits alongside conventional marketing strategies. Research has shown that many organisations<br />
struggle to find where to place social media within their organisational structures. Part of the reason<br />
for this indecision is that there is no clear understanding of the motivation of why particularly young<br />
people use social media, and what impact this has on their engagement with products and brands.<br />
As the number one university for sport in the UK, Loughborough, through its School of Business and<br />
Economics, is interested in understanding how social media impacts on people’s engagement with<br />
their sport or team, but more importantly how this affects their engagement with particular products,<br />
brands and sponsors.<br />
As a university, we train the marketing professionals of the future, and it is essential that our teaching<br />
is based on well researched insights as opposed to simple, uninformed opinions. This research<br />
project aims to develop this understanding and allow organisations to exploit the real potential of<br />
social media.<br />
The research partnership between Synergy and Loughborough University brings together leadingedge<br />
commercial practice with academic rigour and will draw on work from thought leaders in<br />
this area.”<br />
Professor Jim Saker<br />
Professor, School of Business and Economics<br />
Loughborough University
#socialsportsfan<br />
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