The Marketing of the African Football Clubs in the Digital Era

Football or soccer is considered as the most popular sport in Africa, moreover it is the most popular sport in each African country ,although , rugby and cricket are very popular in South Africa, and basketball in Angola as well, football remains the most popular sport in the African continent, from another perspective social media has changed the way sports stars, clubs and fans interact with each other, accordingly football clubs are focusing more on social media marketing to promote the brand popularity and to gain more insights about their fans , In 2016 there were 120 million subscribers using Facebook each month across Africa, over 80% via mobile. However the percentage of users aren’t equally distributed among the continent as around 45% located in northern African and 41% located in the south African countries , which indicates that the technological gap exists between the African regions, This paper will analyse the social media performance of the African football clubs and their implication on generating fans engagement, the research results shows that new established African football clubs are implementing social media marketing strategies that attracts more followers than traditional Africans clubs