Take me out to the Facebook page

Abstract

This paper examines why fans visit a professional baseball team’s Facebook page. The broader objective is to understand motivations for using communication channels in social media. Given the massive popularity of Facebook, insights into the use of this communication channel should provide an important understanding of how digital and social media channels work. The results support a proposed model for understanding fans’ interactions with their sports team’s Facebook page. Team identification related positively with the value fans put on relevant outcomes from visiting the site. Socially relevant outcomes were highly valued among those who visited the team’s page. From the standpoint of practice, the results suggest that sports teams may want to enhance their marketing efforts by placing strong emphasis on the social relationships that fans have with other fans of the same team, and the relationships that fans might build with players through live encounters with them on the team page. Managers of team pages should determine the various outcomes fans value as part of their identification with the team.