The good mood in the Brazilian clubs’ social media

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Everyone knows that Brazilians are very connected to social media. According to data from Hootsuite, 77% of the Brazilian population has access to the internet, and that number has been growing, as the consultancy company Kepios points out that 5.3 million people joined the virtual world between 2021 and 2022.

This large volume of users, in addition to the passion for football and the adoration for the clubs, makes football a micro-universe of gigantic numbers on a weekly basis, according to data extracted by Samba Digital from its dashboards. This information is published every week in an editorial partnership with the website MKT Esportivo.

On average, the 20 clubs in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A range see about 150 to 200 million interactions, taking into account Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok.

The most interesting thing to note is the behavior of the Brazilian public and what kind of content is successful among the fans – which we can also call followers.

The good mood trait

The good mood, a common trait that refers to Brazilian people all around the world, stands out on the clubs social media platforms.

For instance, this year some publications have stood out. They all have in common the good mood as a fundamental reason for success.

This is the case of Corinthians, for example. When Palmeiras, their main rival, lost the long-awaited FIFA Club World Cup title to Chelsea – the very same team they faced and defeated in the 2012 edition of the said tournament – the club published a irony-filled post that had the 3rd best performance

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A post shared by Corinthians (@corinthians)

Also in the good mood vibe, Atlético-MG won the 4th position among the publications with the best performance on Twitter so far in 2022. This feat was due to a photo in which the club says “Smell (Cheirinho) of a champion!”.

We explain the joke: Cheirinho is a term used to tease Flamengo fans. The club was the runner-up in several tournaments in recent years, and because of that, they were jokingly nicknamed “Time do Cheirinho”, or smell team. Atlético-MG took advantage of that and their fans just went crazy: 100 thousand reactions.

What has been said by the multimedia manager at Atletico-MG

Emmerson Maurilio, Multimedia Manager at Atlético-MG, points out that this style really pleases the fans and it creates an increase in the volume of interactions.

“Humorous posts make the fan identify more with the profile. The language of social media is usually funnier and relaxed, especially where joking and teasing are common. Therefore, posts with this style tend to have more engagement in comparison to formal publications. Even protests against refereeing have engagement when done this way.”

Due to a referee error, América-MG suffered a loss in the local derby against Atlético-MG in the Copa Libertadores da América. The club did not hesitate to use Ademir’s nickname, Fumaça, on social media to make fun of the situation.

https://twitter.com/AmericaMG/status/1514430512303071238?s=20&t=06sdNzBaM1RqLJExf29EZQ

Learn more about The Unusual and original content that is successful in Brazil

Rise of football clubs as media content distributor

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Football clubs have access to a wide range of exclusive material that consists of match footage, highlights, interviews, and press conferences. Given the need to retain and attract audiences, clubs have had to become media content distributors and this was one of the ways through which the clubs could interact with their fans and generate revenue.

When it comes to providing a better fan experience, clubs have had to be at the forefront when it comes to utilizing the latest innovation and technology. Providing a better fan engagement experience happens through providing more stats or data analytics which will contribute to a greater understanding of the game. Improving Interaction with fans creates room for better brand engagement and opportunities for promotion hence the several ways through which football clubs can drive more fan engagement are

Start with the basics

While watching a live stream of a match through a club’s channel, fans expect to see a high-quality picture with no buffering, the match should be accessible through any device and it should have the feature to be viewed from anywhere. Making sure options for tuning into matches are easy to find on the website, and any late-breaking team news or updates are displayed throughout.

Video on Demand

Clubs providing access to video-on-demand archives for matches highlight the perfect opportunity for the club to enhance engagement with fans. The clubs would be able to get creative on how the clips would be produced and uploaded for instance during a highlight video the club can focus more on game-changing moments hence the top goals, top acrobatic saves from the goalkeeper, and great pieces of individual skill can be highlighted here.

Post highlight clips draw a lot of attention as fans would be interested to view all the game-changing moments during the match. This not only creates interactions but also benefits fans who tuned in late by enabling them to catch up on what they missed.

Personalization

Personalization is another way of driving engagement and this could be structured as a premium tier subscription option. The offerings could be key moment alerts during matches such as goals scored, individual statistics of favourite players, results, target relevant ads and augmented reality overlays.

Innovation in the viewing experience

Broadcast coverage of sports includes highlight playbacks from multiple camera angles, here the broadcasters decide which camera angle to use. With the right technology in place, digital coverage through the club’s app will provide viewers the option to choose the camera angle by which they can watch the match.

A premium subscription plan would give viewers the option to watch multiple games at the same time on a split-screen. This would be a popular option, especially during playoff tournaments with multiple games on at the same time. An additional feature could be to consider key moment alerts with streaming cut-ins to that other live match stream.

Augmented reality overlays

With the advancement of 5G, there has been successful attempts at presenting individual player statistics during live play by overlaying small data points near a player on screen. Here football clubs can be very specific and they can view player statistics depending on the fan’s preferences.

Microtransaction

It goes without saying that some of the most exciting moments in sports come near the end of a match, with a tied or close score, overtime periods, or penalties to decide the winner. Some rights holders and platforms are experimenting with small fee access late in matches, triggered by key moment alerts to fans who may not have been watching the match.

Learn more about the unusual and original content that is successful in Brazil

City Football groups fan engagement strategies

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Manchester City owners The City Football Group have been at the forefront of embracing and utilising the latest innovations and technology. With a global network of ten clubs spanning five continents, the Abu Dhabi owned holding company has come to represent something closer to an entertainment business than a sporting business.

Premier League giants Manchester City in particular have been in the spotlight when it comes to embracing newer fan engagement strategies and innovations. The English club is armed with an extensive social media presence and a self developed Over the Top platform which was launched in 2019. The club is looking to expand its digital footprint globally hence they have employed newer strategies to achieve those objectives.

City Football Group’s chief marketing and fan experience officer Nuria Tarre had offered some insight into the group’s current fan engagement strategies particularly in relation to Manchester City.

Fan engagement strategies during Covid 19

The emergence of the pandemic disrupted the normal functioning of many businesses around the world particularly the football industry, with matches played behind closed doors clubs had to reanalyze their fan engagement strategies however Nuria believed CFG’s approach was well positioned despite the presence of the pandemic.

“As a group we embrace innovation,” she states. “We embrace technology, we embrace change – a lot of change. Technology has already been part of what we’ve been doing on and off the pitch. Clearly, the pandemic has accelerated the use of that technology for many reasons.”

The pandemic posed a lot of challenges and one of the challenges was for the creative team to gather footage to produce content keeping in mind the necessity to follow the social distancing norm.

“We couldn’t get close to the talent, our players,” Tarre explains, before listing off a number of technologies which the team relied on to create new content. The creative team started gathering footage with the help of drones, remote cameras and body cameras. This kind of technology wasn’t new to the team however it played an instrumental role in helping them produce content.

Tarre had also highlighted a few key achievements during the pandemic, she focused on two key areas. The first one was the club devising the right social media strategy that focused on community management.

The second one was the launch of a live matchday show which was distributed across all of City’s social media platforms. The program was successful in bringing the fans closer to the club and the proper execution of it recaptured some of the matchday spirits that was missing during the games.

“In football and in sports in general, matchday is the rhythm of our engagement with our fans,” Terre says. “And because [for] obvious reasons fans couldn’t be in the stadiums, we decided to dial up that moment of a matchday. We started doing a live matchday show because we thought through the pandemic it was the right thing to do to keep our fans engaged.

“But it’s been so successful – we got, on average, a million views per show – that we decided to keep it post-pandemic.”

The creation of authentic content for fan engagement

The club’s move to produce behind the scene documentaries sheds light on the club’s current content creation strategy. All or Nothing was the first documentary produced that featured Manchester City, the popular Amazon series gave a panoramic insight into the drama both on and off the pitch during the club’s title-winning 2017/2018 Premier League season.

This documentary highlighted the club’s ambition to create and deliver many more documentaries. The recent documentary to have been produced is a feature film released in August which focuses on the final 46 days on the pandemic hit 2020/2021 campaign in which the club won the league and reached the UEFA Champions League final. This film was first released on the club’s OTT service before being distributed on other social media platforms.

“Part of our content strategy is to keep thinking about stories that will authentically engage with our audiences, but also get to know our brand even better, and get to know the club even better,” Tarre continues.

“We were the first, actually, to work with Amazon on All or Nothing. At the time, this felt very disruptive. Now, many others have followed. But at the time it felt disruptive, because probably the biggest barrier wasn’t the willingness to tell those stories from our side of the business, [it] was getting the football side of the business on board, which tends to be very closed by nature. So we managed to put that together and it was hugely successful.

Being a trendsetter

CFG has a reputation for being the front runners when it comes to embracing the latest innovations. City had announced a partnership with Faze clan in 2019 and the announcement of this deal highlighted the club’s objective of establishing their presence in the esports space. Given the large and young audience esports draws, the club had also announced the signing of its first Fortnite player in October 2021.

Tarre believes esports can help City acquire newer fans and appeal to a younger audience.

“For us, esports is a way to engage with the youngest audience,” she says. “It’s a way to keep our brand and our engagement with fans as authentic as possible as well as speaking the same language.”

Besides esports, the developing spaces the club is looking into is the emergence of the NFT (Non fungible tokens) Market. The club had teamed up with artist Jon Noorlander for its first ever NFT drop, the NFT’s theme would revolve around the teams 2020/2021 title winning campaign. Depending upon its success another set of digital collectibles would be launched.

The other innovative space City has forayed into is the Metaverse ecosystem. Recently Manchester City had inked a partnership deal with Sony which would see both the parties developing a virtual Etihad stadium. Through this development users will have the opportunity to visit the clubs virtually created 55,000-seater Etihad stadium in a digital world. Sony subsidiary Hawk Eye will use image analysis and skeletal tracking technology to develop this concept.

Learn more about Manchester City plan to build Etihad stadium in the Metaverse

How YouTube has established itself as a leading destination for sports content

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Organizations around the world have seen YouTube as a platform that connects users. Sports properties in particular have seen this platform as a mode through which they can communicate and connect with their audience. The advancement of this space has given sports properties more options to engage with users and it has provided another channel through which they can generate revenue.

YouTube is a leading destination for sports fans and with the platform garnering more attention from potential audiences, sports properties are now turning their head toward this platform.

Highlights is a shopping window for greater revenue and data

The data that is available on YouTube helps organizations gather insights into the type, length, and variety of content that people are watching. The presence of this data is valuable in the long run as organizations can analyze their audience’s consumption habits and with the given analysis, they can devise a digital media strategy that would cater to their audience demand.

“YouTube highlights are like a movie trailer that encourages viewers to subscribe. We’re happy for that graduation to happen and we don’t always need to be the destination”.

“We really want the industry to understand how YouTube makes you money elsewhere. Proving that link between people watching your content and then paying for that content elsewhere is something we’re really passionate about and we’re willing to co-found research to do so.”

Monetization

With monetization playing an important role for organizations, YouTube has spent years developing the right advertising management tools and programs that give organizations complete control over how their content generates income.

“We launched a partner program a few years ago and we’ve really been ahead of the curve so that programme really is market-leading,” Pilgrim said. “We’ve got advanced tools where partners can block advertisers. If you have sponsorship deals in place and you’re worried about potential conflicts then you can block those competitors from advertising on your content.

With other options available YouTube has come up with a new membership program that would allow the most passionate fans to pay a monthly fee in exchange for additional benefits and exclusive content.

“YouTube has always been an advertising business at our core but we have recognized that partners and creators have asked us for new ways to monetize,” Pilgrim explained. “Memberships have been very successful.

“You can have a paid section of your YouTube channel that ‘super fans’ can have access to. Liverpool FC has a few thousand members each paying US$5 or so. We’ve also brought in paid events.”

Importance of showcasing highlights and live matches in YouTube

Showcasing highlights is an important feature of YouTube. It provides the perfect platform through which sporting competitions can upload their highlight videos and with the platform being easy to access the sporting property would find it easy to draw a large audience. Seeing this as an opportunity many competitions announce tie-ups with YouTube with the objective of attracting and retaining a large audience base. One of YouTube’s first tie-up with a live sporting event was with the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2010, since then the platform has showcased different sporting competitions from the UEFA Champions League finals to the World Handball Championship. The easy accessibility of this platform provides right holders a convenient and efficient route to the market.

Latin American broadcaster Marca Claro showcased the entire Olympic games competition on its YouTube channel and the objective of using this platform was to reach a youthful audience. The social media giants saw the attention that these competitions received on their sites as commercial opportunities which should be explored hence they took the decision to implement DAI into its platform. Most videos are monetized via a few pre-roll adverts however the implementation of Dynamic ad insertion (DAI) would completely change the game as it would allow creative, tailor-made ads to show on videos. This software analyzes the consumption habits of the user and based on their habits would an ad be showcased in the video.

“With DAI we’re really looking to supercharge revenue not just on the body content, which is just one pre-roll ad, but also on live content where we’re looking to add multiple ads,” explained Pilgrim. “[DAI] might seem like quite a small technical thing, but I’m told by our engineering team that this is a non-trivial thing to build. “If you’re watching a football game on YouTube, that one ad might have generated a few thousand dollars of revenue. Now if you have 50 ads and you maintain the same cost per impression (CPI), you can quickly imagine that number goes [much higher] and [streaming] becomes very viable.”

Learn more about YouTube releasing updated sports platform and its latest CTV offer

Content protection is vital

Many sporting competitions consider YouTube to be an integral part of the broadcasting landscape and the reason behind it is the problems that the platform addresses. YouTube had implemented a software called ‘Content ID’ which detects any copyright infringement made by videos uploaded. Sporting competitions experience a sense of security when they know that their content is being protected and with YouTube taking the necessary steps to mitigate the risk sports competitions are now exploring the idea of broadcasting live events on YouTube. Easy accessibility and a sense of security has made YouTube an option for sporting properties to showcase live events and highlights.

“We’ve got this really impressive system that can use Machine Learning to fingerprint video, understand what’s in it and then look around YouTube and find other copies of that video,” Pilgrim said. “From this point on, it’s the rights holder’s choice. They can take it down, monetise it or track the data on it.”

Manchester City sign sponsorship deal with Crypto Exchange OKX

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Manchester City have announced a multimillion-dollar sponsorship agreement with Crypto Exchange OKX. The deal will see the company’s brand being featured in the Etihad Stadium, the academy stadium on the Etihad campus and on the club’s digital assets. The development of this deal will pave the way for the launch of an exclusive club-themed experience on the OKX cryptocurrency exchange platform and both parties would go on to work on future projects as well.

City had initially roped in 3Key technologies as their crypto partner however with the company coming under scrutiny over its legitimacy the club had decided to terminate their sponsorship agreement with them. By brining on board OKX the club has been able to fill the void that was created with the departure of 3Key technologies.

Manchester City signing this deal would see the club make another addition to their extensive sponsorship portfolio which consists of 33 global brands and 16 regional brands meanwhile OKX signing this agreement would see them set foot into the sports industry for the first time

The materialization of this deal would shed light on the growing power of the crypto space which has witnessed a massive revolution since its inception. OKX is a cryptocurrency exchange that has more than 20 million users in over 180 countries and the Seychelles-based company is the world’s second-largest crypto exchange by spot trading volume.   

What has been said by both the parties

Roel De Vries, Chief Operating Officer, City Football Group, said: “We are pleased to welcome OKX as an Official Partner of Manchester City today as they look to venture into the world of sports. The new partnership aligns our shared values of innovation, drive for success and being at the cutting edge of our respective industries. Their broad and inclusive approach to targeting diverse audiences resonates with our approach. We look forward to working together throughout the partnership.”

“We are delighted to partner with Manchester City, one of the world’s best-loved and most successful teams. Football and crypto share something important; they are for everyone, they create inclusivity within society. For OKX, Manchester City is a Club that represents the effect football has to make a positive difference in people’s lives, to bring people together around a shared love of the beautiful game. We are entering the Premier League for the first time as City’s official crypto partner to celebrate this community spirit in the world of football because it’s something we both share,” said Jay Hao, CEO of OKX.

TikTok updates maximum video length to 10 minutes

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Can TikTok still be referred to as a short-form video social media platform following a major new update? TikTok has made a significant announcement, raising the maximum upload time to 10 minutes. With more to watch, TikTok has been experimenting with new methods to grow. This time, with expansion in mind, they have taken it quite literally with this extended video duration.

In this digital age, they are continuously thinking of new ways to provide value and improve the TikTok experience. This is not the first major shift, nor will it be the last. Last year, we saw changes to videos, giving the TikTok community more time to create and enjoy. The ability to post videos of up to 10 minutes in length opens up even more possibilities for creators all over the world.

Learn the latest in TikTok news including a new partnership with NHL.

More than just an update

Although TikTok’s meteoric rise to success was due to a continuous stream of short clips designed to pique users’ interest, the platform has been pushing longer content for quite some time. Longer videos allow TikTok to compete with YouTube while also gaining an older audience and improving app engagement time. However, there may be certain disadvantages to this. A change to longer content may reduce the amount of data acquired on individuals’ watching behaviours, allowing for the customising of the algorithms used to attract viewers.

As TikTok develops to provide creators and users with longer content, its competitors, fuelled by TikTok’s success, have done the opposite, becoming the place to be for short videos. Instagram has launched Reels, YouTube has Shorts, and Snapchat has Spotlight. All of these major platforms are seeking to find the optimal content balance in order to compete and become the hub for a wide range of content.

TikTok releases brand new NHL content partnership

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TikTok has announced a new partnership with another major sports league! This time, it’s the National Hockey League (NHL) and the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA). As part of this arrangement, the NHL will deliver original material and unique experiences on the app, which will assist TikTok’s larger content initiative.

Learn the latest in TikTok sponsorship including TikTok signing on as the Women’s Six Nations’ first-ever title partner.

Trick shots, behind-the-scenes, off-the-ice activities, and anything and everything related to sports and pets are what really make the NHL community tick. As part of this new deal, the NHL will post more than just highlights. More player interviews and other content aimed at capitalising on TikTok trends and engaging its in-app audience should be expected.

What’s in it for TikTok? 

TikTok can look forward to new promotional incentives like in-ice branding and the launch of a new ‘TikTok Tailgate Stage’ for upcoming outdoor NHL games. Furthermore, NHL will work with TikTok on music tie-ins and partnerships for its upcoming events.

This announcement comes as TikTok tries to expand its content offerings and provide additional incentives for producers to contribute to the app. It is challenging to effectively monetize this type of short-form video content. TikTok’s response has been the creation of the Creator Fund as well as working on in-app tipping and other monetization. However, several of TikTok’s top creators are unhappy with the platform’s attitude and income distribution. As a result, creators may shift their focus to Instagram and YouTube Shorts.

Click here to learn more about Samba’s 4 Content Pillars for your TikTok Marketing Strategy in 2022.

If TikTok can provide more direct posting incentives, such as new relationships with major brands like the NHL, it may be able to connect creators into these collaborations in another way. Not only that, but they open up new avenues for audience expansion and revenue.

TikTok also has exclusive content collaborations with Vogue and GQ as part of this strategy. With these new offerings, they are focusing on another important area of interest for TikTok consumers. Not only that, but TikTok will seek to cultivate instant contact while also giving its celebs more opportunities. TikTok will continue to be a destination for creators who want to go where the audience appears to be the most active. However, if rumours about income sharing continue, more of them may decide to post elsewhere, and their viewers will follow.

Women’s Euro 2022 names LinkedIn as national sponsor

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As more women’s football news emerges, the Football Association and UEFA have added to the growing newsreel. This European confederation has formed a new partnership with LinkedIn for the 2022 Women’s European Championship national team tournament.

As a national sponsor of Euro 2022, which will take place this summer in England, the business-focused social media platform will host a number of fan activations surrounding the tournament. While we wait for Euro 2022, LinkedIn will start a campaign called “Make Work Work for Women”. This campaign will develop content that showcases the inspirational stories of female game-changers.

Discover the most recent developments in women’s football, including FIFA’s decision to make Visa the first global sponsor of women’s soccer.

LinkedIn is not the first, nor will it be the last, company to join a list of national level partners. Other notable collaborators include Lego, Pandora, and Starling Ban. The Euro 2022 agreement, on the other hand, is to be the platform’s most significant agreement to date.

Learn more about women in sports, such as TikTok becoming the first-ever title sponsor of the Women’s Six Nations.

This tournament has the potential to be a watershed event for the new agreement. It will provide a platform for professional female athletes to demonstrate their abilities and accomplishments. Off the field, LinkedIn is rumoured to be experiencing an increase in the number of sports professionals using the network to share unique stories and insights about their work. This collaboration offers a big opportunity to promote the tournament as well as extend the women’s game through their platform and introduce it to new audiences.

INTERVIEW: Samba Digital’s Media Buyer, Ingrid D’Avila, shares her vision and the growing need of a digital presence

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With Samba’s ongoing success and enormous achievements, it was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the people behind the logo and their diverse customer base. This is the sixth in a series of articles in which we interview a member of the Samba Digital team and highlight their unique insights. This series of articles will address some of the most often asked topics about working with large customers, as well as their most compelling case studies.

Ingrid D’Avila, one of Samba Media Buyers for Brazil, will be our next stop in this series.

What is your role at Samba?

I began working as a social media assistant at Samba one year ago. Today, I work as a Media Buyer for Brazil, where my job is to find and contact media choices for our clients. Out-of-home media, internet media, influencer campaigns, and so on are examples of these media options. When a client makes us a request, I work with our team to organise a database with all of our possibilities and to look for new options.

What is your vision?

Samba is a terrific place to work; we are continuously learning new things, we interact with individuals from all over the world, and communicating with them is a unique experience. This variety, I believe, is critical to our company’s success. We listen to each other in order to achieve the best results possible, we operate as a team, and this is my vision of Samba -a company/agency that is unique and can make a difference for our clients as well.

Learn more about Samba’s team, including the first interview of the year with Camila Cunha.

What are your best case studies?

In early December, we launched a global campaign for Bundesliga, a collaborative effort in which we identified influencers from various countries across the world to promote Der Klassiker, a match between FC Bayern and Borussia Dortmund, the two clubs with the most fans in Germany. Thanks to our teams’ creative use of influencers from all over the world within this activation, we were able to incorporate key messages around the season’s narrative, such as Bundesliga bringing together all types of people to share their passion for the game/their club, regardless of age, gender identification, sexual orientation, spiritual belief, income status, and so on.

We used two key platforms in keeping with Bundesliga’s message of reaching out to a worldwide audience. Instagram was one of these channels, and it was utilised to develop engagement and community through linking to broadcasters via Story and Wall Post, as well as by leveraging TikTok to build engagement and community. We had a lot of success with these two platforms, and here are just a few of the most popular posts in terms of views and interaction:

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A post shared by Luan Palomera (@luanpalomera)

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A post shared by Merve Toy ( Ebzhnou ) (@mervetoy)

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A post shared by ⚽ Pro Football Freestyler (@anassebbar)

Learn more about Samba Digital’s involvement in the Bundesliga’s Der Klassiker campaign by clicking here.

How do you see the evolution of the market?

As social media grew in popularity and influencers emerged, so did the market. Everything is now online, and you must have an online presence, which is something that brands are striving for on a daily basis. This is something that the market needs right now.

According to a study conducted by IAB Brasil (the organisation that represents the Brazilian publicity industry) in 2021, digital publicity in Brazil invested more than 36 billion reais in 2020 and the first six months of 2021 (18 months total). When we compare the first semester of 2021 to the same period in 2020, we see a 25% increase. According to the estimate, video was the most popular social media medium in 2020, accounting for 80% of total digital advertising spending. This data shows that the digital economy is really evolving. Not only that, but it demonstrates that they are also given facts supporting the importance of social media.

The pandemic was also a significant motivator for progress. This is due to coronavirus restrictions as more individuals integrate technology into their daily lives. The publicity industry took advantage of this to expand even more, and as I always say, everything is now online, and you must have a digital presence nowadays.

How do you bring added value to your clients?

I like to think I bring value by suggesting activities and options that are relevant to our clientele. Our clients must work with solutions that are consistent with their products, line of business, ideology, and other variables. We must be careful to propose solutions that will work rather than simply giving a popular option; our action plans are tailored to each customer in order to achieve the greatest results possible. This concentration brings value not only to our clients, but also to our work.

Flamengo’s winning streak in the LATAM standings continues into the new year, despite a drop in total interactions

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Since last year, Samba Digital has been paying close attention to what LATAM football clubs are doing to stay in touch with their fans, supporters, and clients. One of the most enjoyable aspects of checking these numbers has been discovering traces of each country’s culture in the content uploaded.

Another key piece of information that this article will provide is where the local user is being influenced by this content. Is Mexico similar to Chile? Are Argentinians, who make up one-quarter of Mexico’s population, more devoted to football topics? Continue reading to discover our comments on what happened in LATAM in January.

Flamengo, always Flamengo

The Brazilian Championship, which was still being played in the traditional month of vacation and the start of the season in January 2021, caught fire in its final third, with Flamengo fighting for the national title, which it would win. That month, the Rio de Janeiro club received 29 million interactions. This is not surprising given that there was a dizzying increase throughout the year, reaching 48 million total interactions.

The video of Michael’s goodbye showed a ceremony among the squad to award the title of “ugliest player” to right-back Rodinei, which really broke out with Flamengo’s fans.

With 2.5 million views, the stunt is the highlight of the month:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Flamengo (@flamengo)

Despite Flamengo and Instagram…

When compared to January of last year, the number of interactions in Brazil has decreased. While Instagram increased from 125 to 141 million users, Facebook decreased by more than half: from 30 to 14.1 million users, and it continues to lose continental reputation.

Twitter, on the other hand, showed a total increase of 10% over the previous year and reached 32.5 million interactions, with Brazil boosting Twitter’s performance.

A Good duel: Corinthians vs River Plate

The two clubs have already battled in the Copa Libertadores da América a few times, but this time the battle has been fought digitally, mainly on Instagram.

The two clubs have been increasingly close in terms of interactions over the last four months, and they have even switched positions. Regardless of this duel, the truth is that, over the last four months, Corinthians and River Plate have always come after Flamengo.

The Mexican consumption pattern

Mexico demonstrated a technical tie between Facebook and Instagram interactions in January 2021. There were 14.9 million interactions on Facebook and 15.1 on Instagram out of the 30 million total.

However, like in other countries, Facebook’s performance fell, and in January 2022, while Instagram maintained 15.1 million interactions, Facebook fell to 10.7 million. This research reveals a consistent shift in how Mexicans consume content from their football clubs. When it comes to Facebook interactions, Mexico comes out on top in terms of proportion.

Click here to learn more about Samba’s LATAM rankings, which include a remarkable total of 366 billion interactions in 2021.

And the result of the highest Mexican % in the division is…

(…) the presence of three Mexican clubs among the 10+ on Facebook. Cruz Azul, Club América, and Monterrey were among the 10+ clubs on the list in January. Cruz Azul came in second, with slightly over 2.4 million interactions, accounting for over 20% of all interactions on the social network in Mexico.

The usual intruder

As previously mentioned, Twitter maintains its performance as a result of the platform’s expanding relevance in Brazilian digital consumption. This is demonstrated by the fact that, of the 11 clubs with the highest number of interactions, ten are Brazilian, with River Plate, from Argentina, serving as the intruder.

The Argentine team almost jumped the line of the Copa Libertadores final on Twitter, since Flamengo and Palmeiras, the protagonists of the last decision, were the two clubs with the most interactions on the blue bird’s social network.

A record for a Chilean club

For the first time since the Monthly Ranking’s creation, a Chilean club is among the top ten. The feat was achieved with 5.94 million Colo-Colo interactions, thanks to the Copa Chile titles, against Everton, the Supercopa de Chile, over Universidad Católica, and the club’s appearance in the Summer Tournament, when the team competed against Universidad de Chile and Boca Juniors.

Total numbers

Despite some highs to kick off the new year, the number of interactions declined from 290 million in January 2021 to 289 million in January 2022. Unfortunately, the positives did not exceed the negatives this time, as the cause of the dip was that last year’s calendar saw fewer matches – primarily from the Brasileirão – due to the pandemic.