Fluminense and Boca Juniors: Who performs better at X?

Credit: Marcelo Gonçalves : flickr Fluminense FC

X (or Twitter, as you like) is the subject of the third chapter of the series of analyzes carried out by Samba Digital on the digital works of the Libertadores finalists

 In the first chapter of this series of articles in which we analyze the digital works of the two Libertadores finalists, we find that Fluminense, even with an 80% smaller Instagram follower base, has a performance that is only 15% lower than Boca Juniors over the course of the year. This is thanks to the engagement rate of Fluminense fans – the highest on the planet in 2023.

Now, in this third chapter, we leave Mark Zuckerberg’s network and direct our analysis to the official pages of the two clubs on X – or Twitter, as many (like this one who writes to you) are still reluctant to accept the platform’s name change.

Here, the scenarios seen on Instagram are not repeated!

On the one hand, the Argentines, with 6 million followers, have a huge advantage when it comes to the clubs’ follower base; on the other, Fluminense is ahead of its rival in terms of interactions, with 22% more, as a result of a solid work on Twitter.

Follower Base: Argentina leads

With almost 6 million followers – 5.99M to be exact – the Argentine club has a base four times larger than its rival in the Copa Libertadores final.

By the way: Boca Juniors’ performance needs to be praised in this regard.

The Argentine club is the 15th club with the highest number of new followers on Twitter in 2023, surpassing clubs such as Al Nassr (on its account in Arabic), River Plate, Flamengo (the Brazilian club with the highest growth), Tottenham Hotspurs, FC Bayern, Inter and Milan (ITA), among many others.

Back to the comparison with Fluminense: the difference between the two clubs increased significantly in 2023, as Boca Juniors added more than 738,000 new followers, while Fluminense gained just over 43,000 until October 29.

The Argentine club’s growth in followers peaked on May 4, the day Boca Juniors’ official account celebrated Napoli (ITA) winning the Scudetto after a long wait. The connection between the two clubs revolves around Diego Armando Maradona, eternal number 10 for both clubs.

According to official X metrics, the post has 1.6 million views and more than a thousand retweets. Among them is the repost from Napoli’s official account in Spanish – which, without a doubt, represented a little more than 50% of the entire performance of the original post.

¡𝙁𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙘𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙨, @sscnapoliES! 🏆⚽

Diego está feliz 🔟💙💛💙 pic.twitter.com/mV4kPKlmdT

— Boca Juniors (@BocaJrsOficial) May 4, 2023

Fluminense’s peak comes with the surprising announcement of full-back Marcelo, ex-Real Madrid, on his return to the club where he began his career as a football player.

With the unexpected announcement, the post reached almost 17 million people, becoming one of the most popular in the history of Brazilian football. In terms of conversion into new followers, however, the results were far short: “only” 1,600 new followers. The performance was even lower than that of Boca Juniors on the same day: 1,900.

A hora de voltar chegou. #WhereImFrom #M12NoFlu pic.twitter.com/f6FxsGWojW

— Fluminense F.C. (@FluminenseFC) February 24, 2023

Interactions: Fluminense’s surprising victory

It is not normal for a club with a follower base four times smaller than the other to have an advantage in total interactions. Rare exceptions happen when a “meme” is successful. But, in the case of two football giants, with all the editorial responsibility that involves managing social media, this is not considered normal.

But, here, the unlikely happened: Fluminense, with 23.2 million interactions, has an advantage over Boca Juniors and its 18.2M interactions throughout 2023.

And, in this case, we can highlight several factors that contribute to this result.

• The high engagement rate of FluTT (name given by fans to the Tricolor digital militia).
• Fluminense’s continuous content production: there are almost 11,000 posts, compared to 3,300 from the Argentine club.
• The creative and original capacity of Fluminense’s social media managers, which ensures that the content that the audience wants to see is what is actually published.

Just like on Instagram, where Fluminense leads the world engagement ranking, Tricolor’s Twitter presents a result that is just as expressive. With a 5% engagement rate, it is only behind two giant football brands: Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, who recently won the Ballon d’Or again.

Boca Juniors: the best internationalization case in Latin America

When we analyze where Boca Juniors’ followers are, we find a slightly different scenario than that of Fluminense.

Of the 10 cities with the most Xeneize followers, 4 are Argentine; in the case of Fluminense’s page, on the other hand, 9 are Brazilian.