SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS: COPA LIBERTADORES

The 2023 edition of the Copa Libertadores kicked off on Monday, March 27th, with the draw being made for the competition’s eight groups. The first phase of the tournament runs until the last week of June and will be contested by 32 South American teams.

Featuring robusting brand and commercial development plan –  which create new conditions for further exposure for its sponsors – Copa Libertadores has two official Instagram pages for its men’s tournament, in Portuguese and Spanish:

The original and well-crafted content of each increasingly highlights the digital work being implemented on social media.

On Instagram, a social media platform that accounts for almost 75% of all interactions in South America, a quick analysis of the 2022 data reveals a great interest on the part of Brazilians in the continental competition. The annual engagement rate of the page in Portuguese is higher than those achieved by the official accounts of NBA, Champions League, Bundesliga and even Brazil’s top flight, Serie A.

One of the possible reasons is the on-field performance of the Brazilian teams, since last year’s final was played between two sides from the country: Flamengo and Athletico Paranaense. When looking at the evolution of the account’s engagement rate in Portuguese, one can see a deep interest in continental dominance from Brazilian fans.

The account in Portuguese performs 4x better than the continental one when it comes to the number of interactions. The post celebrating the title winning goal, by Gabigol, has nearly 950,000 interactions.

On the continental account, in Spanish, the top-performing post reached 258,000 accounts and, curiously was for Rony’s bicycle kick goal scored for Palmeiras, a Brazilian team.

Despite the fact the best post in Spanish would not even enter the Top 20 of the Portuguese account, the page in Spanish had more total interactions than the Brazilian one:

Finally, the Libertadores account in Spanish stands out when it comes to the number of new followers: in the first quarter of the year, the Spanish page gained three times as many new followers as the Portuguese one:

Header credit: Hiam August