Title

The Power of Self-Promotion: Twitter Followers and Guaranteed Purses in Professional Boxing

Abstract

The social media phenomenon has provided tremendous opportunities for self-promotion. Many professional boxers have engaged with social media through a number of outlets. This study will focus on professional boxers' use of one of these outlets, Twitter, and its correlation with their guaranteed purses for fights. As only the third study to date utilizing multivariate regression in modeling the determinants of realworld purse data for professional boxers, this study contributes to an underdeveloped segment of the continually-expanding sports economics field, as we analyze the link between social media popularity and sport-specific pay. The analysis highlights the importance of "star power" for professional athletes and provides statistical evidence of how they can benefit financially via enhancing this quality through Twitter (Z21, Z22, M31). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Economic Insight is the property of Missouri Valley Economic Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Department(s)

Economics

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-1-2016

Journal Title

Journal of Economic Insight

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