Social media marketing of football clubs: a study with Portuguese football clubs - SL Benfica, FC Porto, and Sporting CP

The various existing social media platforms aim at interaction and connectivity between users within online communities through the production and sharing of content. Like sports, social media allows users to obtain experiences that often stirs emotion. This empirical study combines football with social media through a multiple linear regression analysis involving the social networks, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, of the three biggest Portuguese clubs—SL Benfica, FC Porto, and Sporting CP. This research reviews the literature of sports fanaticism, the structure, and content of posts, combined with a bibliometric analysis of social media, which allows the understanding of this vast theme in four components: social media engagement, user-generated content, online communities, and content marketing. Through the testing of the hypotheses written for this research, assertive conclusions were obtained about the performance of social media posts in the sports field, such as the relevance of visual posts, compared to textual posts; the effectiveness of posts that refer to the nostalgia of the supporter; and the determination of the social network most suitable for the accompaniment of a live football match.