https://orcid.org/0009-0007-0485-5785
Figures
Abstract
Post-match institutional communication has become a visible component of elite football events, yet comparable official messages can receive very different levels of public attention. This study examines UEFA Champions League post-match communication as a configurational problem rather than as a linear consequence of response speed or message strategy. Using 25 theoretically selected focal club-event observations from the 2017–2018–2022–2023 seasons, it calibrates one outcome set, High_News, from a Raw_Mentions-derived media-visibility proxy and four causal-condition sets: High_Delay, High_Shock, High_Stakes, and High_TemplateDeviation. The analysis uses conservative coding of template deviation, separating response latency from communication form. The intermediate solution identifies one stable high-stakes legacy pathway and one sensitivity-dependent crisis-minimalism pathway. The stable pathway combines non-delayed response, low outcome shock, high match stakes, and trophy/legacy-oriented template deviation. The crisis-minimalism pathway is retained in the baseline solution but is interpreted cautiously because it depends on medium-confidence coding and changes under strict recoding. The analysis of ~High_News confirms causal asymmetry: non-membership in the high-attention set is not simply the inverse of the pathway(s) associated with High_News. The findings contribute to sport communication research by showing how event structure and institutional discourse combine to produce bounded media visibility, while avoiding population-level claims about all football matches or internal platform algorithms.
Citation: Ling Z, Ren X, Luo B (2026) Beyond speed and strategy: A configurational analysis of collective attention to post-match institutional discourse in the UEFA Champions League. PLoS One 21(7): e0354175. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0354175
Editor: Jiankun Gong, Universiti Malaya, MALAYSIA
Received: January 26, 2026; Accepted: July 3, 2026; Published: July 28, 2026
Copyright: © 2026 Ling et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
1. Introduction
Elite football clubs now communicate in an attention environment where sport performance, platform affordances, journalistic uptake, and fan affect interact. A post-match message issued through an official club account is not merely a notice of a result. It is an institutional act that can be searched, quoted, reframed, circulated, and contested. This creates a recurrent empirical puzzle: some routine-looking messages remain peripheral, whereas other messages with similar surface form become focal points for news coverage, memes, reputational commentary, and collective memory.
Existing research provides useful but incomplete explanations for this puzzle. Sport communication scholarship has shown that digital platforms have altered the relationship between organizations, journalists, athletes, and fans [1,2]. Crisis-communication research has further shown that organizational responses are evaluated through responsibility, timing, and message strategy [3,4]. These perspectives explain why response timing and message fit matter. They are less able to explain why the same communicative attribute may have different outcomes depending on match stakes, outcome shock, and the public meaning of the event.
The present study reframes post-match attention as a set-theoretic outcome. Rather than asking whether response delay, match stakes, outcome shock, or discursive form has an isolated effect, it asks which combinations of conditions are associated with membership in the set of high collective attention. This formulation follows configurational theory, which treats conjunctural causation, equifinality, and causal asymmetry as empirical features of social phenomena [5–8]. It is also substantively suited to elite sport, where attention rarely follows from organizational communication alone and instead emerges from the encounter between event structure and institutional discourse.
Empirically, the study examines 25 focal club-event observations from UEFA Champions League matches between the 2017–2018 and 2022–2023 seasons. The contribution is methodological and substantive. Methodologically, the study provides a transparent small-N fsQCA design with a case-selection audit, a reproducible Raw_Mentions-derived outcome proxy, truth-table reporting, robustness checks, and reproduction code. Substantively, the study shows that response speed is better understood as a threshold condition for entering the post-match visibility window, whereas the broader attention outcome depends on how timing, event shock, match stakes, and communication form combine.
2. Literature review and theoretical framework
2.1. Sport communication in a platformized attention environment
Sport communication has moved from a broadcast-dominant system toward a networked media environment in which clubs, athletes, journalists, and fans jointly shape visibility [1,2]. In this environment, official messages are not stable endpoints of communication. They become platform objects that may be searched, quoted, reframed, and redistributed. Platform studies indicate that visibility is governed by interactional and algorithmic logics rather than by organizational intention alone [9–12]. For elite sport organizations, this means that the consequences of a post are partly determined after it enters a contested attention field. Institutional pressures may also encourage organizations within the same field to adopt standardized and recognizable communication forms [13].
This point is especially relevant after high-intensity matches. Football events generate immediate affective publics: supporters and opponents evaluate not only the score but also the symbolic meaning of victory, collapse, humiliation, redemption, or legacy. A club message that appears institutionally routine may be treated by users as irony, solidarity, evidence, ridicule, or collective memory. The object of analysis here is therefore not sentiment alone but collective attention: whether a post-match institutional act becomes visible in wider news and search environments.
2.2. Limits of linear crisis-communication assumptions
Situational Crisis Communication Theory remains central to organizational crisis communication because it links perceived responsibility, reputational threat, and response strategy [3]. Sport crisis-communication research has also shown that fans act as crisis communicators rather than passive audiences [4]. These perspectives help explain why timing and response fit matter. Evidence from proactive crisis disclosure further indicates that early organizational self-disclosure can enhance perceived credibility [14]. Yet post-match communication in elite football differs from many organizational crises because the club is not always managing a discrete scandal; it is responding to a competitive event whose meaning has already been partly produced by the match.
The implication is that communication strategy should be examined conditionally. A rapid score post after a routine match may disappear quickly. The same rapid post after a historic collapse may become highly visible because the event supplies the primary affective force. Likewise, template deviation may align with celebration in one case and become irrelevant or risky in another. This conditionality weakens the explanatory value of isolated net effects and supports a configurational approach.
2.3. Configurational causation and set-theoretic attention
fsQCA is appropriate when the research problem involves conjunctural causation, equifinality, and causal asymmetry [5–8,15,16]. In a set-theoretic design, cases have degrees of membership in calibrated sets. The question is not whether an independent variable increases a dependent variable on average, but whether a condition or combination of conditions is consistently associated with membership in an outcome set. In this study, High_News denotes membership in the set of high collective attention cases. The negated outcome, ~ High_News, denotes non-membership in that set, not a separate linear variable called low attention.
The theoretical expectation is therefore conditional. High collective attention should not be attributed to speed, shock, stakes, or template deviation in isolation. It should emerge when event structure and communication form are configured in a way that allows an official message to enter and remain visible in the immediate post-match attention window. Fig 1 summarizes this logic.
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Case selection and case boundary
The case boundary was defined as UEFA Champions League post-match events from the 2017–2018–2022–2023 seasons for which a relevant club-issued post-match message and external attention indicators were available. A case was defined as one club’s first substantive official post-match communication following a Champions League match that generated a salient sporting outcome. The unit of analysis is therefore the club-event-message, not the match alone. The final sample includes 25 focal club-event observations.
The study uses explicit theoretical-sampling criteria rather than relying on the undefined label “iconic.” A case was eligible when it met at least two of the following criteria: final or knockout-stage structural salience; a clearly identifiable title, humiliation, reversal, miracle, or final-loss narrative; available timing for the focal club’s first substantive institutional post; and retrievable Raw_Mentions within the post-match attention window. The case-selection audit in S1 File reports retained and non-retained candidates and explains the inclusion or exclusion decision. This sampling logic is appropriate for a small-N fsQCA design but is not statistically representative of all Champions League matches.
3.2. Data sources and measurement window
The outcome set, High_News, is based on a reproducible media-visibility proxy rather than on a broader opaque composite index. Raw_Mentions records the retrievable post-match media mentions associated with the focal club-event observation within the immediate post-match window. News_Index is generated by applying a natural-log transformation to Raw_Mentions and then normalizing the result to a 0–100 scale. Because platform-level search-intensity data were not consistently available for all historical cases, News_Index is not treated as a comprehensive public-attention index or as a weighted composite of news volume and search intensity.
Response timing is measured as Raw_Delay, the number of minutes between the final whistle and the focal club’s first substantive post-match communication. High_Shock is assigned from the event narrative and separates outcome disruption from communication form. High_Stakes is assigned from tournament stage. High_TemplateDeviation is assigned only from the audited Deviation_Type field. It is not inferred from Raw_Delay, the match result, or the event trigger. This separation was introduced to avoid circularity between response latency and communication form.
3.3. Calibration strategy
For quantitative variables, membership scores follow direct piecewise linear calibration. Values at or above the full-membership anchor receive 1.0; values at or below the full-non-membership anchor receive 0.0; values between the crossover and either endpoint are linearly interpolated. High_Shock, High_Stakes, and High_TemplateDeviation are fuzzy-set assignments based on theoretically specified categories rather than interval-scale measurements. The full case-level coding is provided in S1 File.
3.4. Template-deviation audit
High_TemplateDeviation required the most conservative audit. A less conservative specification would risk treating delayed silence, rapid post-loss communication, or a dramatic result itself as evidence of template deviation. The specification is conservative. High_TemplateDeviation is assigned only when the observable form of the focal communication departs from routine result reporting through trophy or legacy framing, unusually heightened affective celebration, symbolic non-score-led framing, or crisis-minimalist reporting after an extreme defeat. Cases that depended on response delay or rapid post-loss timing are coded as Standard_Report in the main specification or moved to robustness checks.
The study uses a structured author audit rather than an intercoder-reliability design; no intercoder reliability coefficient is claimed. To make this limitation visible rather than hidden, the analytical dataset in S1 File reports Post_URL when available, Post_Text_Excerpt_or_Audit_Note, Source_Access_Note, Deviation_Type, Deviation_Evidence, Coding_Confidence, and Robustness_Flag for each case. The strict robustness checks then test whether coding-sensitive cases alter the solution.
3.5. Analytical procedure
The analysis proceeded in five steps. First, the 25-case analytical dataset was reconstructed and aligned with the case-selection audit. Second, all sets were calibrated from the analytical dataset in S1 File using the rules reported in Table 1. Third, necessity analysis assessed whether any single condition reached the conventional 0.90 consistency benchmark. Fourth, sufficiency analysis examined observed truth-table rows for membership in High_News. Fifth, robustness checks tested alternative calibration anchors, stricter evidence rules, conservative template recoding, and an alternative structural-silence specification. The case-selection audit, observed truth-table rows, robustness checks, and reproduction code are provided in S1 File (Fig 2).
All reported values are recalculated from the analytical dataset using the reproduction code provided in S1 File.
4. Results
4.1. Necessary conditions
Necessity analysis indicates that no single condition, by itself, explains membership in High_News. Using the conventional 0.90 consistency benchmark, ~ High_Delay (consistency = 0.971) and High_Stakes (consistency = 0.928) meet the formal criterion for weak necessity, but their coverage values are modest. High_TemplateDeviation does not meet the necessity threshold after the conservative audit (consistency = 0.417), which means that template deviation should not be interpreted as a universal prerequisite for high collective attention. Table 2 reports the necessity results.
4.2. Sufficiency and configurational pathways to High_News
The intermediate solution identifies one stable pathway and one sensitivity-dependent pathway associated with membership in High_News (Table 3). The stable pathway is ~High_Delay x ~High_Shock x High_Stakes x High_TemplateDeviation - > High_News (consistency = 0.912; raw coverage = 0.342). It is supported mainly by title-winning or legacy-framing cases: Man City 2023, Liverpool 2019, Real Madrid 2022, Bayern 2020, and Chelsea 2021. The second pathway is ~High_Delay x High_Shock x High_Stakes x High_TemplateDeviation - > High_News (consistency = 1.000; raw coverage = 0.045). It is represented by the Barcelona-Bayern 2020 humiliation case and is therefore interpreted as sensitivity-dependent rather than as a general crisis pathway. The overall solution consistency is 0.921, and overall coverage is 0.387 (Fig 3).
The figure reports the intermediate fsQCA solution using standard configurational notation. ● indicates presence, ⊗ indicates absence, and blank cells would indicate conditions not specified. The sensitivity-dependent pathway is retained in the baseline solution but interpreted cautiously because it changes under stricter evidence and conservative coding checks.
4.3. Case-based interpretation
The stable pathway shows that the strongest evidence concerns high-stakes title or legacy communication rather than template deviation in general. In these cases, the club responds without substantial delay, the outcome is not coded as high shock because the focal club wins the title, and the official message departs from neutral result reporting through ceremonial or legacy-oriented framing. This pathway has high consistency but moderate coverage. It should therefore be read as a bounded sufficient configuration, not as a comprehensive explanation of all high-attention cases.
The sensitivity-dependent pathway captures a different pattern: rapid communication after a high-shock, high-stakes defeat accompanied by crisis-minimalist form. Because this pathway is represented by a single medium-confidence case, the analysis does not treat it as a central finding. Its value is diagnostic: it shows why crisis-minimalist communication should be investigated in larger, text-richer samples, but it should not be generalized from the present dataset.
4.4. Non-membership in High_News
The analysis of ~High_News confirms causal asymmetry. Non-membership in High_News is not the simple inverse of the stable high-attention pathway. Several cases combine high stakes or high shock with non-membership in High_News because they lack the specific conjunction of non-delayed response and strong, independently coded template deviation. This finding supports the set-theoretic interpretation: absence of high attention cannot be inferred by reversing the conditions associated with high attention.
4.5. Robustness checks
Robustness checks are provided in S1 File. The stable high-stakes legacy pathway remains substantively similar under alternative High_Delay anchors, alternative High_News anchors, and strict evidence checks. The crisis-minimalism pathway is more fragile. When medium-confidence High_TemplateDeviation cases are conservatively recoded, or cases marked Recode_if_strict are treated as Standard_Report, the crisis-minimalism pathway is removed while the stable legacy pathway remains. This pattern strengthens the central interpretation by showing which configuration carries the main explanatory weight and which configuration should be treated cautiously (Table 4).
The detailed consistency and coverage values for each robustness check are provided in S1 File.
5. Discussion
5.1. What the configuration explains
The analysis narrows the interpretation of High_TemplateDeviation. Rather than treating every high-shock or delayed-response case as a departure from routine communication, the conservative audit identifies the most empirically defensible form of template deviation in this sample: trophy or legacy-oriented post-match framing in high-stakes contexts. This narrower result is methodologically preferable because it separates event shock, response delay, and communication form.
The main finding is therefore not that template deviation universally increases attention. It is that a particular configuration – non-delayed response, high stakes, low outcome shock for the focal club, and strong title/legacy framing – is consistently associated with membership in High_News. This interpretation is conservative and methodologically stronger because it avoids deriving communication form from match result or timing.
5.2. Conditional visibility and sport communication theory
The findings refine crisis-communication assumptions in elite sport. SCCT-oriented thinking explains why timing and response fit matter under reputational pressure [3]. The results show that response fit is conditional on event structure and public affect. Rapid response places a club inside the post-match visibility window, but visibility becomes stronger only when rapid entry is configured with high stakes and a communicative form that audiences and news systems can recognize as historically or symbolically meaningful.
This is why the manuscript uses the term conditional visibility. Institutional voice is not fully manageable because it enters a platform environment shaped by user uptake, journalistic selection, and algorithmic circulation. It is also not irrelevant. It can become consequential when attached to a structurally charged event. The contribution is to specify the conditions under which discourse becomes visible, not to claim a universal mechanism of algorithmic amplification.
5.3. Implications for sport organizations
For sport organizations, the results caution against a simple speed rule. Rapid response is important because delayed communication may miss the immediate attention window. However, speed alone does not determine the scale or valence of attention. After title wins, expressive or legacy-oriented communication may be appropriate because celebration is expected, shareable, and institutionally legitimate. After humiliating defeats or reversals, the present evidence is weaker; crisis-minimalist communication may become visible, but this pathway requires further testing and should not be treated as a general prescription.
The practical implication is risk-sensitive calibration rather than deterministic control. Clubs cannot reliably create high attention after a low-stakes event through stylistic creativity alone, and they cannot reliably suppress attention after a high-stakes shock through response speed alone. Communication teams should therefore assess the event configuration before choosing tone, timing, and message form.
6. Limitations and future research
The study has three main limitations. First, the sample consists of 25 theoretically selected UEFA Champions League cases. This design is suitable for fsQCA but does not support population-level estimation. Second, News_Index is a log-normalized Raw_Mentions-derived media-visibility proxy. It improves transparency compared with an opaque composite, but it does not capture every form of digital attention, such as quote-post networks, meme diffusion, multilingual fan discourse, or platform-internal ranking. Third, High_TemplateDeviation is based on a structured author audit. The structured audit improves transparency through Deviation_Type, Deviation_Evidence, Coding_Confidence, Robustness_Flag, and strict robustness checks, but future research should add independent coders, intercoder reliability statistics, and more fine-grained linguistic measures.
Future studies can extend the design in two directions. A temporal extension could model burst, decay, and secondary-wave dynamics. A comparative extension could examine domestic leagues, non-European competitions, or clubs with different fan bases and media ecologies. These extensions would help distinguish event-driven attention from organization-specific reputation effects.
7. Conclusion
This study examined why some UEFA Champions League post-match institutional communications become associated with high collective attention while others remain comparatively peripheral. Using a theoretically selected sample of 25 focal club-event observations and fsQCA, the study shows that High_News is not explained by any single condition in isolation. The strongest evidence supports a stable high-stakes legacy pathway: non-delayed institutional communication, high match stakes, low focal-outcome shock, and observable trophy/legacy-oriented template deviation.
The analysis is deliberately conservative. It separates response latency from communication form, treats News_Index as a Raw_Mentions-derived proxy rather than a comprehensive attention index, and distinguishes a stable pathway from a sensitivity-dependent crisis-minimalism pathway. The findings therefore provide reproducible configurational evidence within a bounded UEFA Champions League sample, not population-level claims about all football matches or internal platform algorithms.
Supporting information
S1 File. Supporting information archive.
This ZIP archive contains the 25-case analytical dataset and calibrated QCA input files, the case-selection audit, the truth table for High_News, robustness-check outputs, reproduced necessity and solution metrics, the reproduction code, and a supplementary information document describing these materials.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0354175.s001
(ZIP)
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