ABSTRACT
There are more than 3 billion people active on social media. Football is the world's most popular sport and channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram have an incredible amount of fans from around the world. Football generates vast volumes of digital content, fuelled by a global fan base of strongly and weakly connected fans. Sports emotion is valuable only if it is shared and this is exactly the catalyst, which allows social media to be successful. Sports entertainment is not simply spectated, it is lived and interacted with by fans that are conversing and sharing their feelings with their community and the world. Supporters are no longer in touch with their club for only 90 minutes during a match but make contact every day to reach exclusive content, behind-the-scenes information, relevant news and interaction with clubs and fans. It is the connection, interaction, and content that explains why so many fans follow football clubs on social media. Because the way we experience football is changing, the authors explore the impact of social media and the new generation of fans. The chapter focuses on the key issues of social media fans, lurkers, content and channels, sponsoring in the digital era and the connected stadium.
