Driving pre-match fan engagement through social media: effects of message characteristics and team performance

Purpose This study aims to understand the kind of content and context that effectively create higher fan social media engagement (SME) through pre-match content posted by sports teams. Design/methodology/approach This research examines the effect of inspirational, informational, entertaining and warmth content appeal on affective and cognitive responses from fans in the form of likes and shares. Messages on X (previously Twitter), chosen as a representative social media platform, from the teams participating in the Indian Premier League, were analysed using regression models to validate the proposed model empirically. Findings For sports clubs, entertaining, warmth and inspirational content is more effective than information content in generating likes on social media. Content with high vividness is effective only for sports teams with high performance. Fans of low-performance teams exhibit higher responsiveness to content with inspirational appeal. Research limitations/implications This research contributes to the sports marketing literature by examining the influential role of warmth and inspirational content in generating higher SME in the pre-match context. Practical implications This study provides prescriptions to sports clubs for leveraging social media platforms to engage their fans through appropriate content. Given the growth of sports leagues in developing and developed countries, this study provides guidelines to sports clubs for effective social media marketing. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to integrate social identity theory and elaboration likelihood model theoretical frameworks to study fan engagement with social media content posted by sports clubs.