However, larger trends made significant differences in fan engagement and total followers for each account.

"Trends such as an increased number of total tweets from an account over a long period of time, as well as long winning streaks and overall winning percentage all helped increase the number of followers a team had on its Twitter account," said co-researcher Grace Yan from MU.

"On the other hand, long losing streaks and fewer tweets in general correlated with losses in total numbers of followers.

"This shows that while teams' social media producers can't necessarily control success on the field, they can make a difference in maintaining fans by continuing to create social media content to engage existing fans and potentially bring in new ones," Yan added.

They also found that while higher levels of activity on teams' Twitter accounts such as original content creation led to more followers, that trend did not apply to activities such as "favoriting" or "re-tweeting" messages produced by other people.

The study was published in the Journal of Sport Management.

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