Digital and Interactive Marketing Communications in Sports

Sport communication is defined as “a process by which people in sport, in a sport setting, or through a sport endeavor, share symbols as they create meaning through interaction” (Pedersen et al. 2007, p. 196). Over the past two decades, research in sport communication has grown significantly as the size of the sport business industry has risen sharply, from $213 billion at the end of the 1990s to approximately $600 billion in 2019 (Plunkett Research 2019), which resulted in the creation of discipline journals (e.g., International Journal of Sport Communication, Communication & Sport), textbooks (e.g., Strategic Sport Communication, Pedersen et al. 2021), Sport Public Relations (Stoldt, Dittmore, and Branvold, 2012), and theory/review articles (e.g., Abeza, O’Reilly, and Nadeau 2014; Filo, Lock, and Karg 2015; Hambrick 2017, Pedersen 2013; Pedersen et al. 2007).

Note that the global sport industry grew 13.5% from 2020 to 2021, which is an astonishing rate, given that the sport industry has been facing unprecedented challenges since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that started 2020. Almost all live sporting events were either canceled or suspended, particularly during the early months of the pandemic. As such, sport organizations operated with restrictive measures, such as social distancing, remote work, and the suspension of business activities. One of key factors of the impressive growth rate is communication and media’s ubiquitous presence and impact on the sport market. As Pedersen (2013) noted, “[T]he organization, facilitation, administration, and promotion of sport could not be accomplished without” strategic communication and management (p. 56). Indeed, digital marketing and advertising became an integral aspect in promoting sport events, increasing brand equity, and keeping sport fans engaged with stakeholders (e.g., athletes, coaches, leagues) involving sport events and organizations during the pandemic. For instance, starting in summer 2020, live sporting events started up again but without fans’ presence (e.g., NBA Finals, Formula One, Masters Tournament). Having moved beyond the one-way media via traditional telecast, digital marketing’s interactive nature and two-way communication have enabled sport fans to actively engage with others in conversation and information sharing through social media platforms, such as direct messages on Twitter and Instagram. These examples clearly indicate the importance of interactive sport communication as a strategic marketing, advertising, and management tool for sport organizations.

The significance of sport communication is also evident as the Commission on Sport Management Accreditation (COSMA), which is a specialized accrediting body in the field of sport management, lists sport communication as one of the four core functions of sport management, along with sport marketing, sport finance/economics, and sport operations. Pedersen (2013) asserts that “sport cannot exist without communication” (p. 57). Communication in sport is indeed a unique and essential aspect of the sport industry, as business entities involved in the sport industry utilize marketing communication via many mechanisms (e.g., mass media, social media, public relations) to promote products/services, share information, and repair organizational images.

Thus far, considerable knowledge has been developed. For instance, Pedersen et al. (2007) defined the field of sport communication in their position article. Pedersen (2013) also reflected his thoughts on how communication interplays within the sport environment. Soon after, a series of theoretical review articles were published to propose future scholarly directions by integrating previous studies related to marketing communications in sport (e.g., Abeza, O’Reilly, and Nadeau 2014; Abeza et al. 2015; Filo, Lock, and Karg 2015; Hambrick 2017). Recent research in sport-related marketing communications has examined sport sponsorship effects on brand equity (Cornwell 2019; Jensen et al. 2021; Wakefield et al. 2021), brand value (Yazdanparast and Bayar 2021), message appeal effectiveness (Raggiotto, Scarpi, and Moretti, 2021), social media–based marketing efforts (Mastromartino and Naraine 2021; Phua, Pan, and Chen 2018), athlete–brand image development (Na, Kunkel, and Doyle 2020), augmented reality (AR) activations for sport marketing (Goebert and Greenhalgh 2020), sport consumption decision making by millennial sport fans (Yim et al. 2021), and use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (Demirel 2020; François, Bayle, and Gond 2019; Yu 2021). This growing body of work suggests that digital and interactive marketing communications in sport is an increasingly important area for both researchers and practitioners, including brands, companies, and sport organizations, due to the continuing convergence of sport marketing efforts with emerging media and communication technologies in the globalized marketplace.

Although these concerted research efforts have advanced scholarly inquiries in this discipline, the pace of evolution of marketing communications due to technology advancement requires further attention to the study of marketing communications in sport. As was indicated in the call for papers, the aim of this special issue is to expound new perspectives in interactive marketing communications in sports. A total of four articles in this special issue shed light on contemporary issues pertaining to digital and interactive marketing communications in the sport industry. These articles address such issues as livestreaming, sponsorship activations on social media, critical analyses via Instagram stories, and social media engagement for ranking brand endorsers, all of which are pressing topics that may help further advance digital and interactive marketing communication as they relate to sports.

In the first article, “Transforming the Fan Experience through Livestreaming: A Conceptual Model,” Wymer, Naraine, Thompson, and Martin (2021) propose a conceptual model via a multimethod case study approach involving a content analysis and semistructured interviews. The conceptual model offers novel insights into our understanding about sport fan engagement processes through social livestreaming services (SLSS) implemented in digital media platforms. This study also offers practitioners ways to better employ SLSS within a digital strategy as a means of engaging with sport fans.

Sponsorship is one of the two largest revenue sources for sport teams and leagues (Mullin, Hardy, and Sutton 2014). As such, understanding sport fans’ reactions to various activations implemented by sponsoring companies remains one of the most important issues in marketing and interactive communication studies. Given the increasing importance of extended reality (XR) experiences within sport sponsorship programming, Burton and Schlieman (2021), in their article titled “User Response to Extended Reality Sponsorship Activations on Social Media: Exploring Impressions of GoPro’s Use of 360° Video in Marketing,” examined the use of XR (via GoPro) in sport sponsorship activations. By means of analyzing video metadata and users’ comments available in YouTube, the authors sought to understand users’ attitudes and impressions toward the brand and the technology (i.e., 360-degree video activations as sponsorship communications). The findings of the study offer important justification for the integration of XR technologies and 360-degree video in sponsor marketing and highlights the interactive and experiential benefits that could be incorporated into marketing messages to a sponsoring company’s target markets.

Another growing area of research in sport-based marketing communications involves the use of social media by athletes to connect with their fans and consumers. In the third article of the special issue, “Tell Me a Story: Exploring Elite Female Athletes’ Self-Presentation via an Analysis of Instagram Stories,” Li, Scott, Naraine, and Ruihley (2021) investigated how female athletes during the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup incorporated Instagram Stories into their online branding efforts. Applying content analysis of 1,948 Instagram Stories posted by 37 athletes, the study revealed the six most prevalent posting purposes: interaction, behind-the-scenes (BTS) stories, promotional, match-related information, information sharing, and opinion. In particular, athletes used Instagram Stories for both onstage and backstage performances, showcasing their athletic expertise on the field, as well as their individual personalities and private lives. The study’s findings provide some new insights about female athletes’ online self-presentation strategies through social media platforms like Instagram Stories, offering implications for how brands and companies can utilize them to more effectively connect with sports fans and other consumers.

Social media engagement is an important area of research for digital and interactive marketing communications in sports. In the fourth article, “Social Media Engagement As a Metric for Ranking U.S. Olympic Athletes As Brand Endorsers,” Brison and Geurin (2021) applied social identity theory (SIT) to assess a total of 5,756 tweets by 190 U.S. Olympic athletes during the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics. Results revealed that follower engagement was significantly higher for male athletes than for female athletes. Non-brand-related posts also received significantly greater engagement than brand-related posts. In addition, almost 90% of brand-related posts made by athletes did not disclose a brand relationship, despite Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulatory requirements. Results of this study add to a growing body of literature on sport-related social media marketing, offering a better understanding about the relationship between athletes’ followers and their engagement with athletes’ social media posts. The study also offers some guidance to brands and organizations looking to partner with athletes in their digital marketing communications efforts, using social media engagement as a metric for ranking athletes as brand endorsers.

In closing, we would like to thank the Journal of Interactive Advertising and its editor in chief, Dr. Jooyoung Kim (University of Georgia), for supporting us to publish this special issue. We hope that the articles featured in this special issue help sport and advertising scholars to further enhance substantive knowledge in the areas of digital and interactive marketing communications in sports. Future studies should continue to explore and assess emerging technologies, current trends, and important issues related to digital and interactive marketing communications in sports. First, future research should assess emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, and wearable devices, for sport marketing activations. Second, studies should extrapolate current trends in sports, including e-sports marketing, online sport betting, fantasy sport leagues, and cause-related marketing via sports. Third, future research should examine important issues in sport-related digital and interactive marketing communications, including digital representations of race, gender, and social class, and regulatory policies in the broader sport industry context, such as in professional and intercollegiate athletics, international governing agencies (e.g., IOC, FIFA), and among underrepresented groups. Through theoretically grounded empirical and critical analyses focusing on a broad spectrum of emerging technologies, trends, and issues in sports, future scholarly research in these areas will critically examine, debate, and shed light on these new perspectives in digital and interactive marketing communications in sports.