Opinion leaders on sporting events for country branding

Three main objectives guide this work: (i) to investigate to what extent the most relevant opinion leaders on three different sports events can contribute (positively or negatively) to brand a place (Spain) through their comments on four social media; (ii) to analyze to what extent visual reactions (emojis) of social media users are informative, positive or negative, helping or damaging country-brand and (iii) to analyze to what extent the most shared post on each sport event is informative, positive or negative, helping or damaging country-brand. To monitor the three chosen sporting events (mega, medium and local) on four social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube), the tool Atribus was chosen. Our sample was composed of 1,642,319 posts. Our results recommend using any sporting event for country branding, mainly local sporting events.