SOCIAL MEDIA DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES IN PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL CLUBS: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND RESEARCH PROPOSITIONS
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Abstract
Digital transformation has fundamentally reshaped how professional football clubs communicate with fans, create commercial value, and sustain competitive advantage. In this context, social media should no longer be understood merely as a communication or promotional channel, but as a strategic organizational domain. Prior research has focused primarily on content types, fan engagement metrics, and platform-based outcomes, while paying less attention to the internal organizational mechanisms that explain why some clubs use social media more effectively, adaptively, and consistently than others. This conceptual paper addresses that gap by developing a Social Media Dynamic Capabilities (SMDC) framework for professional football clubs. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, the paper conceptualizes social media effectiveness as an organizational capability composed of three interrelated dimensions: sensing digital environmental changes, seizing opportunities through strategic platform and content decisions, and transforming organizational structures, resources, and routines to sustain social media performance over time. Four theoretical propositions are derived from the framework to guide future empirical research. The paper contributes to sport management literature by shifting the analytical focus from platform-level outputs to organization-level capabilities.
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