International Journal of Event and Festival Management

Purpose – This paper aims to uncover how social media is used, managed, and perceived by sports and entertainment venue (SEV) managers. While there is considerable evidence that social media has been used effectively by Fortune 500 companies, it is not known how social media is administered and perceived among managers of arenas, stadiums, performing art centers, and convention centers.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper used survey methodology to capture the perceptions of 383 venue management professionals, all members of the International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM).

Findings – Most venue managers feel their social media efforts are proficient or at the expert level and most have a defined social media strategy. Others feel much less confident about their social media efforts and have no defined social media strategy. At a statistically significant level, those with a defined social media strategy report increased revenue, while those without a defined social media strategy do not. Venue managers forecast a significant increase in non-traditional marketing strategies while using traditional marketing efforts over the next three years far less.

Research limitations/implications – While the 383 responders are IAVM active members who are in venue management, they reasonably represent SEV managers in general and these survey results can be generalized to SEV managers with an overall conservative margin of error of ±5.0 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. The survey was conducted online by e-mail invitation. While using the online media to deliver a survey related to the proliferation of various online activities was, at one time, questionable and, potentially, a source of responder bias, the current level of saturation of e-mail use by and comfort with online activity of professionals mitigates these likely sources of responder bias and is not a source of additional concern with this study.

Practical implications – The paper concludes with a discussion of the results and a recommendation that venue managers define a social media strategy that includes hiring or reassigning staff to support this important area of social media marketing.

Originality/value – This paper is unique in that examines social media use in the unique context of SEVs.