Exploring Sports Communication: A Brief Bibliometric Scan

Abstract

In recent years, sports communication has become a growing field that is getting more attention from researchers. This study examined research trends in sports communication from 1999 to 2025 using a bibliometric approach, analyzing 204 scientific articles retrieved from the Scopus database. The findings indicate that social media is a prominent and recurring theme in sports communication, playing a key role in audience engagement, sports marketing, and the formation of online communities around sporting events, while also shaping both the theory and practice of the field. The results of thematic analysis also indicate that some thematic clusters such as sports media, autobiographies, content analysis, and sports communications have high centrality and density, indicating their development and pivotal role in the knowledge structure of this field. This study offers valuable insights that help researchers and institutions in sports communication identify trends, choose suitable publication platforms, and build effective scientific networks.