Personal Branding In Team Sports Marketing

Nowadays, there is almost no event, no advertisement, without a face of at least one famous person. The involvement of a consciously built personal brand in the promotion is almost inevitable, whether it be a medicine or eyewear brand, or a complete political party. Marketing also plays an increasingly important role in sports. Recently, several researchers have focused on building a personal brand for athletes. The primary purpose of my current research is to demonstrate how a sports team can pursue a marketing strategy based on personal branding. I would like to examine the change in the number of followers, the profitability of conscious selection and subsequent brand building, and the relative effectiveness of its steps. During my empirical study (a 21-day test period), I posted 9 personal branding posts on the Facebook page of the University of Debrecen’s Athletic Club’s Hockey Team, which were promoted by paid advertisements. To measure the results, I used data from the site and compared them to the metrics of the three 21-day cycles prior the experiment. After the period under review, the number of hockey team’s followers on Facebook has more than doubled. Even taking into account the organic impressions (The number of times any content from/about the Team’s Page entered a person's screen through unpaid distribution.) alone, the increase was still more than 120%, and the standard deviation of these appearances fell from above 100% on average to below 50%. The number of engaged users (The number of people who engaged with the Team’s Page. Engagement includes any click or story created.) peaked and rose on average and became more balanced. Earlier research and my empirical study confirm that a strategy based on the players' personal branding is rewarding and can increase both the follower base and the commitment to the team.