Social media visibility and intellectual capital disclosure. An empirical analysis in the basketball clubs

The sport industry, due to the great importance of intangible assets, represents a field of particular interest for the analysis of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD). However, this sector is still underexplored in the academic literature. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing the level of intellectual capital (IC) information disclosed by the most important basketball clubs on their website and the factors capable of influencing the dissemination of such information. Specifically, it examines the impact of social media visibility – in terms of number of social networks, number of posts, number of followers and internet visibility – on the ICD level.

Firstly, this study performs a manual content analysis of the websites of the top 80 European and US basketball clubs aimed at analysing the ICD level. Secondly, it provides for a regression analysis to test the impact of social media visibility on the amount of IC information disclosed.

Empirical results show a low level of ICD among the basketball clubs examined. They also demonstrate the positive impact of number of posts, number of followers and internet visibility on the amount of IC information disclosed online.

This study extends the analysis of the ICD to the sport industry, still little examined by the academic literature. In this regards, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the ICD in the basketball industry.