Title: Antecedents, activities and outcomes of social selling in professional sports clubs

Authors: Sarah Illmer; Benedikt Römmelt; Frank Daumann

Addresses: Sports Economics and Health Economics, Institute for Sports Science, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany ' Marketing Research and Statistics, Faculty of Economics-Logistics-Transport, University of Applied Sciences, Erfurt, Germany ' Sports Economics and Health Economics, Institute for Sports Science, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany

Abstract: Social selling as a relationship-oriented use of B2B social media platforms to achieve sales targets is highly relevant for professional sports clubs, as a large part of their revenue comes from sales in a B2B context, i.e., sports sponsorships. This paper examines social selling on B2B platforms by professional sports clubs through semi-structured expert interviews based on a social selling concept with the dimensions of antecedents, activities and outcome. The results show that this concept can easily be transferred to the sports industry and that social selling already has high importance for salespeople. The specifics of the sports industry should be considered and there is potential for optimisation for the clubs and their employees to make even better use of B2B platforms in the sales context. Against this background, further research on the topic of social selling in the sports context can build on this first qualitative study.

Keywords: social selling; professional sports; sales; business to business; B2B; social media; sponsoring; sponsorship.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSMM.2025.153084

International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, 2025 Vol.25 No.2/3, pp.159 - 185

Received: 26 Mar 2025
Accepted: 19 Dec 2025
Published online: 21 Apr 2026 *

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