The impact of social media on sports attendance and merchandising sale

The onset of social media has expanded communication in sports, but few studies have investigated whether social media as a sport marketing tool increases team revenue. The purpose of this study is to determine what effect a social media campaign on Twitter has on increasing attendance and merchandising sales of a college athletic program and what influence Twitter has on team identification. This research draws on theories of consumer behavior and social identity to explain the effects of team identification in social media marketing campaigns and its financial implications. The following research questions guided this study: 1) How does social media influence team identification in consumers as measured by Twitter analytics? 2) How does the social media platform Twitter contribute to consumers' sense of team identification as measured by the number of followers? 3) How does Twitter influence branding as measured by post engagements as indicated in Twitter analytics? 4) How does a social media marketing campaign on Twitter impact game attendance? 5) How does a social media marketing campaign on Twitter impact fan merchandising sales? Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, independent t-test, and Pearson correlation in IBM SPSS Statistics 23.;Keywords: social media, team identification, social identity, sport marketing.