Social Media, Fan Engagement and Global Sport

This chapter is a discussion of social media and fan engagement from an international perspective. It draws on existing literature of these two topics, while also including more recent research on consumer/fan segmentation in the online space (Bruffy, Scott, Naylor and Beaton, 2014; Scott, Pegoraro and Watkins, 2015). Social media has never been more ‘personalized, individualized, and made pleasurable to use’ (Booth, 2010, p. 2). Further, the rise of social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, has provided consumers with new opportunities to communicate and interact online (Chao, Parker and Fontana, 2011). Social media consumers also produce and consume media content simultaneously (Mahan and McDaniel, 2006), suggesting that consumers are actively engaged in mass media (Booth, 2010).