The impact of social media within the sporting industry

Abstract

Public Relations within the sporting industry should play a vital role towards an organization’s key publics, the relationships developed and the overall organizational image that the sport organization portrays. Ultimately public relations are responsible for creating and maintaining a mutually favorable relationship amongst an organization and its key publics. Based on this premise, it can therefore be said that public relations within the sporting industry serve as a management function which involves the managing of communication, reputation and relationships that determine the success or failure of that sport organization. The role of public relations within sporting organizations have acquired considerable significance in the new media era. Hence, making the job of a public relations professional equally easy and difficult in terms of understanding social media, how publics use it and how to connect with their key publics. Therefore this study set out to assess the impact of social media communication tools within the sporting industry. A quantitative descriptive methodology was employed for this study. The results of the study indicated that although social media are used as a communication tool, other social media platforms should be included in the sport organizations communication strategy.