Social media has become an essential set of platforms for sport teams and organizations to engage, interact, and connect with their fan bases. From an analytic approach to fan demand for sport tournaments, the authors examined the demand shifters motivating fans to follow social media accounts within the context of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Men's Basketball Championship. Changes in the number of followers of participating teams’ Twitter accounts were tracked daily during the tournament as a proxy for fan interest and demand. Independent variables regarding game performance, previous performance, and school performance were analyzed in a regression model. The findings indicated that, during the tournament, fans' social media following behavior was different from the behavior during the regular season games. Further, there were shifts in fans’ social media following behavior in the advanced rounds compared to earlier rounds in a tournament setting. A tournament setting has certain unique attributes that can arouse new consumers' interests, and thus practitioners can tailor their content to appeal to fans, increase follower interaction and reach, and provide better content to maintain the followership gains moving forward, using tournament settings.

社交媒体已成为运动团队和组织与其粉丝群互动、互动和联系的重要平台。通过分析球迷对体育赛事的需求，作者研究了在全国大学体育协会一级男子篮球锦标赛的背景下激励球迷关注社交媒体账户的需求转移因素。在比赛期间，每天都会跟踪参赛球队 Twitter 帐户关注者数量的变化，作为球迷兴趣和需求的代表。在回归模型中分析了关于游戏表现、以往表现和学校表现的自变量。调查结果表明，在比赛期间，球迷的社交媒体关注行为与常规赛期间的行为不同。此外，与锦标赛设置中的前几轮相比，在高级轮中粉丝的社交媒体跟随行为发生了变化。锦标赛设置具有某些独特的属性，可以激发新消费者的兴趣，因此从业者可以定制他们的内容以吸引粉丝，增加粉丝互动和影响力，并提供更好的内容以使用锦标赛设置保持粉丝增长。