Football clubs in the digital era: the key role of direct fan engagement and brand image for a successful Facebook strategy

The rise and wide diffusion of social media applications allow sports organizations to directly communicate with fans, capitalising on their emotional involvement with teams and establishing mutually beneficial relationships. Despite the large body of research devoting attention to sport clubs and social media, very few studies exists on how professional football clubs make use of Facebook, the most popular social medium worldwide. Drawing on the existing literature on public relations, marketing communication and brand image literature, this study primarily aims at investigating the difference between top and regular club in using this tool, by means of a large content analysis of the official pages of eight Italian and Spanish clubs. In line with the expectations, results revealed that top clubs try to directly involve fans through Facebook communication significantly more than regular clubs; they are also more committed to manage their overall brand image by this social media, while smaller clubs stick to the communication of information almost exclusively related to team’s games and players. The study contribute as well to provide practical implications for clubs: in order to boost fans’ engagement, they are advised to seek for direct fans involvement in the communication process and to privilege post containing visual forms of communication, preferably images.