Understanding sporting fandom in social media: A UK perspective of professional Rugby League clubs

The purpose of this research is to examine the ability of Social Networking Technologies in relation to its capability to generate revenue for Rugby League (RL) organisations within the United Kingdom. Social Networking Technologies have blossomed over the past decade, as they have become an integral part of their everyday lives. Organisations are now viewing this technology as a new marketing method to push content and promotions towards the target market, and sporting organisations are no expectation. This research concentrates on how these RL organisations are harnessing similar technologies with a particular focus on Twitter in order to develop a dedicated fandom for their organisation, and whether fandoms can be harnessed to increase revenue for the club. This research used a mixed method approach to gather a wide source of data from both the clubs and the fans perspective. The data was collected using face-to-face interviews with the social networking managers at professional RL organisations, as well as electronic questionnaires to get the fans perception of the content that is being generated. Furthermore, the Twitter feeds of these RL organisations were also examined to gain further insight into how conversations between the team and the fans were being generated online. The results show that RL teams, which were developing fandom on Twitter, perceive it to be an effective tool to increase revenue for the organisation. However, they indicate that it is important to not overuse Social Networking Sites (SNS) as a means to generate sales, as their sites should be primarily used to communicate with fans of the clubs. This is due to other key business sectors provide larger revenue percentages in comparison to SNS, such as increased media coverage and sponsorship deals.