Exploring Fans’ Social Media Engagement in National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball: A Consumer Culture Theory Perspective

Abstract

This study explored fan engagement patterns and league-specific discussion themes on X (Twitter) during the National Basketball Association (NBA) Playoffs and Major League Baseball (MLB) Postseason. Using BERTopic topic modeling, 38,585 fan-generated tweets were analyzed to examine how online fan communities structured playoff-related discussions. The findings revealed several shared themes, including fan emotional response to game outcomes, fan community support, collective cheering, championship talk, in-game updates, and player-centered narratives. The two leagues also exhibited distinct topic structures. NBA discourse placed greater emphasis on betting and prediction-related topics, player performance analysis, highlights, and event-oriented chatter, while MLB discourse was characterized by collectibles and trading cards, historical references, gameplay and scoring, lineup discussion, and rally slogans. The study supports and extends consumer culture theory and online brand community identification by showing how digitally mediated fan communities across leagues may prioritize different discussion topics as part of league-specific meaning-making during high-stakes competition.