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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
WANG Tianyu
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DOI:10.17265/2328-2185/2026.04.003
Beijing New Oriental Foreign Language School at Yangzhou, Yangzhou, China
This paper develops a conceptual framework in which fan engagement is theorised as a partial mediator of the relationship between social media interaction and sports event brand loyalty. Five propositions are advanced and stress-tested against three distinct empirical regimes: ongoing league competitions, recurring club tournaments, and quadrennial mega-events. The framework departs from the dominant treatment of engagement as the sole psychological mechanism by explicitly acknowledging competing mediators, and by introducing a moderated-mediation extension in which platform affordances and community management practices condition the strength of the engagement pathway. Comparative data across the NBA, the UEFA Champions League, the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games reveal that aggregate engagement volume varies by more than two orders of magnitude across regimes, and that the proposed framework applies with greatest force to ongoing league contexts where fan identification is durable. The paper also examines whether the model, developed largely on Western data, retains explanatory power in the distinctive platform ecology of Chinese sports media. Cross-sectional evidence dominates the field but cannot adjudicate the endogeneity between engagement and loyalty; longitudinal and quasi-experimental designs are argued to be necessary next steps. Implications are drawn for theory, for managerial practice, and for the widespread industry preoccupation with follower counts as a proxy for brand strength.
social media interaction, brand loyalty, fan engagement, sports events, moderated mediation, sports marketing
WANG Tianyu. (2026). The Impact of Social Media Interaction on Sports Event Brand Loyalty: The Mediating Role of Fan Engagement. Management Studies, Vol. 14, No. 4, 202-214. doi: 10.17265/2328-2185/2026.04.003.
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