Top European football clubs and social networks: a true 2.0 relationship?

Purpose - In the scenario of today's Information Society, social networks are powerful promotional tools that football clubs can use to their own advantage by managing efficiently and effectively their image so as to enhance their appeal to sponsors and firms looking for marketing and advertising for their products. By analyzing a series of items that appear in the foremost European football clubs' official Facebook pages, the purpose of this paper is to provide both descriptive and quantitative accounts of the extent to which those football clubs succeed in managing the potential for interactivity that their official Facebook profiles provide. Design/methodology/approach - The authors take as the basis of the quantitative analysis the volume of reactions from the fans of the clubs' official Facebook pages displayed in the form of comments or clicks on the button "Like," taken as a function of the type of posts published under the Facebook "Timeline" tag. Besides elaborating upon the data thus collected in terms of a descriptive study, the authors conduct correlation range statistical tests (Spearman's rho coefficient) and an analysis of variance in order to obtain quantitative results on which the authors support the concluding statements. Findings - There is a mild positive correlation between a club's ranking according to UEFA and both the number of fans and the degree of effective interaction displayed in the club's official Facebook pages. Regarding the different types of content to be found in the posts, there is also a significant difference between the important volume of reactions to those most frequently posted and the very limited response displayed to the least frequently posted types. In this sense, it is to be stressed the moderate response obtained by the content openly demanding the users' interaction (polls, contests, greetings, or encouraging messages, etc.). Research limitations/implications - The authors believe that the most important limitation is the small size of the sample, having a scope of 20 European football clubs, and its short time frame, since the data referred only to March 2013. Nonetheless, these are the most representative clubs in the European scenario, since they comprise UEFA's top 20 ranking. Practical implications - It is interesting to study, as the authors do in the contribution, different aspects regarding the design of football clubs Facebook pages and the activity shown therein, so as to learn how to improve their effectiveness in providing for a true interactive experience. Research on the types of content to be found in the posts available on Facebook's "Timeline" tag that can contribute to establishing a deeper engagement on the part of the fans can thus be very useful to anyone devising marketing strategies for a football club. Originality/value - The research literature on the use of social networks such as Facebook by sports organizations and, more particularly, by football clubs, is still very scarce. Past contributions have been focussed on the presence of football on the Web 2.0 in general terms, and on comparing different online interactive tools. Nonetheless, they do not tackle the questions related to the types of content provided by a particular social network, the response to them by the users, and with it, the characterization of their effectiveness as communications, marketing, and promotional tools.