An examination of social media use in New Zealand’s men’s and women’s rugby team

• Main Author: Wee, Bevie Shi Yi
• Other Authors: Leng Ho Keat
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/73784
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In New Zealand, rugby has been one of the most popular sports given the high levels of both local and international success. The success has ensured that there is a large portion of the country’s population who are interested in the performance of the rugby teams in the country. This has been shown by the strength of the local rugby league which is more popular than any other sporting leagues in the country. The All Blacks, for many years has been one of the strongest teams in the world, dominating both the IRB rugby 7s league and other international tournaments. The high success has mainly resulted from the strength of the local league which can be directly attributed to the high number of fans that are interested in the sport. One of the emerging sport in this aspect has been the women rugby team which has also been growing at a fast rate. For both teams to ensure continued growth, use of social media, and especially Facebook has been one of the key strategies that has been applied by both the All Blacks and the Black Ferns. This has provided an effective platform where the teams can interact with their fans, allow the fans access to the various backroom activities that are carried out by the teams as they prepare for tournaments and give them a chance to interact with their individual players on the various social networking platforms. All these activities have been aimed at strengthening the relationship between the teams and their fans which is will assure the teams more support and high levels of loyalty which will a foundation for the success of the teams. Facebook has been one of the most popular social networking platforms that has been adopted in New Zealand. This has meant that it has provided organizations and institution a good strategy to reach their fans, customers and audience as they are able to post interactive posts on the platform which can reach millions of fans with little efforts. This has been the case for both The Black Ferns and The All Blacks, both of which have used the platform to increase the level of interactions with their fans and hence increase the level of support with their fans. The two teams, being at different levels of growth in terms of the number of fans have adopted different strategies to ensure that they achieve high levels of interaction. Other than on-field performances, the two teams have founded their success by using Facebook to give their teams the story of how they prepare for matches, the levels of commitments among the players and their status at each specific period of time. Given that All Blacks team already has more fans, their main strategy has been to continue increase the level of interactions with their fans while for the Black Ferns the strategy has been aimed at increasing the number of fans on their social media platforms. This explains the high number of posts for the women team as compared to the men team. This study looks at how the levels of activities on Facebook between the two teams have differed and the reasons behind this. This will be achieved by looking at the difference between the two teams in terms of their use of Facebook.