Assessing the integration of Twitter into the strategic operations of sporting organisations: the case of national governing bodies for sports in England

Twitter, a social media application, has opened up communicative avenues for many stakeholders in the sports industry. The pervasive and rapid emergence of Twitter has given sports business and management researchers an opportunity to explore the strategic exploitation of the application by all kinds of sporting organisations. The purpose of this paper is to assess how sporting organisations’ social media content helps them achieve their strategic goals in terms of engagement and persuasion. To this end, the paper empirically examines how nine national governing bodiesfor various sports in England use Twitter. The study’s results accentuate the opportunities that these organisations have to use Twitter to achieve their ultimate goal of increasing participation in their respective sports. Accordingly, the paper recommends that these sporting organisations adopt proactive approaches to the way they use social media/networking and integrate Twitter into their strategic operations