In a society where users are reliant on social media platforms, sport clubs and athletes are finding that they have a different relationship with fans than other creators.
Having launched in the early 2000s, platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have quickly become an integral part of how sports clubs share news and interact with fans.
For clubs in the West Yorkshire region, data collected for club’s Twitter and Instagram accounts across a multitude of sports has shown an increase in social following off the back of the Covid-19 pandemic
Follower numbers for 2023 are only set to increase as well, plus clubs can expect growth in new platforms like TikTok too.
Correlation between match form and interactions.
When delving into social media data, a correlation was found between a club’s number of post interactions and whether they were winning or losing.
For Leeds Beckett University’s Renan Peterson-Wagner, who is a senior lecturer for sports business and marketing, the correlation wasn’t a surprise. “There’s an old theory in the 1970s that showed that when people win, they show support for their team by wearing the team colours the next day,” he said.
“You see the opposite effect when the team loses so the way I see it, people transfer those behaviours onto social platforms so if their team wins, it’s more likely they are going to engage more.”
Room for improvement looking at the bigger picture
According to SocialTracker.io, currently five of the top 50 Instagram and Twitter accounts, five on Instagram and four on Twitter are sport related (Cristiano Ronaldo comes out the highest on both).
Compared with newer platforms like TikTok, who only have two sport-related accounts in their top 100, the future has never looked brighter for teams and athletes to grow their following among Generation-Z.
