LAWRENCE — Women's professional soccer has grown in popularity over the last decade, while social media has simultaneously given athletes an accessible way to promote their personal brands. A new study from the University of Kansas analyzed how professional women soccer players in Europe use social media to promote their personal brand and how factors like their team's social media use influence their popularity.
Perhaps most prominently, the research found that when a player's team shared its social media presence with a men's team, it negatively affected women players' following.
"Intuitively, you'd think when men and women are branded together on one account it would be good," said Nataliya Bredikhina, assistant professor of sport management at KU and the study's lead author. "It exposes them to a larger audience and more followers. But it actually has the opposite effect. It verifies, essentially, the same gender discrimination we see online and in society."
Bredikhina, who researches athletes' branding, led two studies into the factors that shape European women soccer players' Instagram followings, a popular platform for athletes to promote their personal brands. The first collected and analyzed Instagram posts for teams and players at the end of the 2020-2021 season, and a second collected data from posts for a three-month period during the 2021-22 season. Both analyzed how the team's master brand, media and the market the athletes played in affected their online following, influence and popularity.
The first study found that if a team's account had authentication, or a "check mark" for an official account, it positively influenced both the team and player's following and engagement. However, when the men's and women's team were branded on the same account, it negatively influenced athlete's follower count.
The second study delved deeper into the teams' branding efforts and how it influenced the athletes' following. Media use and verification also boosted athletes' accounts. Analysis showed teams with joint accounts devoted more posts to the men's teams and players, and that while team verification helped, it was more difficult for women athletes to get verification.
"We have to be conscious here that verification helps grow status. Media has influence over who can get those check marks," Bredikhina said. "Gaining prominence as a woman athlete is much harder. Accounts that are already more heavily promoted get continued attention and get recommended by the algorithms. It's like the rich getting richer."
When analyzing a team's ranking and geographic market size, the researchers found no significant effects on athletes' following. Bredikhina said it is not clear exactly why ranking and market had little influence but theorizes it could be because in-person attendance is not important in people's decisions whether to follow an athlete or that transferring among teams influences a player's popularity by region, but that the questions could be grounds for future research.
The current research, co-written with Thilo Kunkel of Temple University, Heather Kennedy of the University of Guelph and Francesca Fumagalli of Cantú Next in Cantú Italy, was published in the journal Sport Management Review.
Bredikhina said the research can both help fill gaps in understanding of athletic branding and help teams and athletes improve their approaches via social media.
"Traditionally in sport management there is an overemphasis on male athletes' brands," she said. "It can also sometimes be generalized that what happens in men's sports applies to women's sports as well. Social media these days is often looked at as a proxy to athletes' lives, and it is highly important to the monetization of brands. Women have not been the focus of these studies."
Monetization is vital for women athletes, who are traditionally paid much less than their male counterparts. However, better understanding how team marketing influences players' prominence could help clubs as well.
"Making the investment to have dedicated accounts for women's teams and to post about them more frequently should not be hard for teams to do and could help build a team's brand, which can spill over to the athlete," Bredikhina said. "It could also help women boost their careers and give insight on how to dedicate resources and help them build their own brands."
