NFL in Brazil: a data-driven success story

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September 6, 2024 will join the Brazilian sports history mainly for the National Football League (NFL) presence. Not only because of the packed stadium, let alone the 60 million USD economic impact on São Paulo, or because the 49,000 tickets offered for sale sold out in less than two hours, a record time since the NFL decided to board a plane and take a regular season game to another country, but also because of the digital performance achieved by the NFL’s official Instagram profiles.

On September 6 and 7, the NFL’s official Instagram account took the top spot in terms of engagement. In total, @NFL reached 12.4 million interactions during these two days of analysis, compared to 6.6 million for the official profile of the Premier League, the most important football championship in the world. Almost double!

But what proves the strong local engagement of the public is the performance of @NFLBrasil, the official Portuguese profile of the league. With 3.7 million engagements, the profile became the 6th best among major global sports events.

3.7 million engagements between September 6 and 7 means that @NFLBrasil has surpassed the performance of profiles such as La Liga, Bundesliga and the Brazilian Championship itself, which, for comparison, “only” reached 333 thousand interactions in the same period.

The graph above shows the escalation of engagement for @NFLBrasil, with a total of nearly 3.5 million between September 6 and 7, the day the Philadelphia Eagles traveled to Brazil and defeated the Green Bay Packers 34-29 in a game that counts as Week 1 of the 2024-2025 NFL season.

@NFLBrasil had biggest growth than the @NFL

When analyzing the growth of the follower base among major sports events, the NFL did double duty by taking the top two spots. The highlight, however, is that the Brazilian profile’s follower growth was greater than that of the global profile. While @NFLBrasil gained 50k new followers, @NFL gained 39k new followers worldwide.

These 50k new followers between September 6 and 7 represent a 5.3% increase in the total base.

Eagles and Packers digital performance grew

Without official accounts in Portuguese, the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers ranked 2nd and 3rd, respectively, in a comparison of the official franchise accounts on Instagram. Of the 11.4 million engagements added by the 32 profiles, 3.5 million came from the Eagles and Packers, or 30.7% of the total between September 6 and 7.

If we look at the 23/24 NFL regular season, the Philadelphia Eagles have a similar presence. The franchise was the 3rd largest in terms of engagement with a total of 67.7 million engagements. In just two days, or one game, the Eagles generated 2.6 million engagements.

The Packers, on the other hand, ranked a modest 12th in engagement last season. The 900,000 interactions in a single weekend represents 3.2% of the total for the 23-24 season and proves that new markets are becoming a rich avenue for acquiring fans and, consequently, generating business and expansion.

Caze TV: second biggest performance

Cazé TV, which broadcast the event in Brazil, reached 9.2 million interactions on September 6 and 7, making it the second most engaged media outlet during the period.

Amid the Brazilian national team’s playing for the FIFA World Cup Qualifies against Ecuador, which was simultaneously broadcast by TV Globo – Brazil’s main tv station – in the same time of the NFL’s Brazilian match, in addition to the arrival of Memphis Depay, an iconic Dutch striker recently signed by Corinthians, Cazé TV recorded a post about the NFL as the second most-interacted post on its profile: nearly 400 thousand.

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Uma publicação compartilhada por CazéTV (@cazetv_oficial)

A North American event on Brazilian land

One of the main reasons that makes the NFL the phenomenon that it is is the integration of extensive events into the sport.

When we analyzed the most important posts from @NFLBrasil during the event, we were able to confirm once again that the NFL event becomes what it is because of all the social impact and interest it generates.

Proof of this was the post with the most engagement. It wasn’t even a player: it was the Brazilian national anthem, sung by Luisa Sonza. In total, there were more than 1.5 million engagements.

Ver essa foto no Instagram

Uma publicação compartilhada por NFL Brasil (@nflbrasil)

The second post concerns the artist of the musical show, Anitta.

With the caption simply Anitta and over 300 thousand interactions.