Last week, the world discovered the clubs qualified for the semifinals of the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League. But does on-field success reflect in the clubs’ performance on their digital assets? The Data Insights team at Samba Digital analyzed performance from Tuesday, April 16th to Friday, April 19th, to evaluate the performance of these clubs on their official Spanish-language accounts.
But first, which of these clubs have official accounts in Spanish?
Before we continue, it’s important to note that Real Madrid, being a Spanish club and its official account being in its native language, was not considered in this analytical comparison.
Of the other three clubs qualified for the semifinals of the UEFA Champions League, Paris Saint-Germain and FC Bayern were ranked 1st and 6th, respectively, when analyzing the reach of their posts on their Spanish-language profiles.
Having a perfect year so far, which already includes the Bundesliga title, Bayer 04 Leverkusen reached the 5th position on their official profile in the language with 2 million accounts reached.
With a humorous tone, Paris Saint-Germain joked about repeating the feat that occurred in the 2020/2021 edition and the post alone reached 2.1 million accounts.
The work was so well done that the second post among all Spanish-language accounts was also from PSG with Dembélé as the protagonist and another 1.6 million accounts reached. It’s worth noting that the player left Camp Nou for Parc des Princes at the start of this season.
The strategies that allowed PSG to face this performance crossed different universes and included the knowledge of the recent history of confrontations between the clubs with a viral touch of an iconic phrase of Homer Simpson. The other piece only explored the rivalry intensified by the recent transfer of Dembélé and his funny face, which was very expressive.
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A new multi-year content partnership has been announced between ITV and Twitter. The partnership will optimize the broadcaster’s output on Twitter and create bespoke content activations for the social media platform. The deal will exclusively cover the Qatar 2022 World Cup, 2023 Rugby World Cup, and the FA Cup for the next two years.
This partnership materializing will bring more than 1200 real-time highlight clips from one of Europe’s largest content providers to the social media giant.
The partnership is being announced at a time when Twitter’s Amplifying initiative is covering some ground. The initiative would allow advertisers to align their ads with premium Video content as a result, sponsors will be able to harness and leverage ITV’s extensive content offering whilst utilizing Twitter’s targeting tools.
In addition to this, the social media giant’s Next team will produce a selection of activations across ITV’s schedule over the course of this partnership.
Twitter and ITV joint initiative
“Both Twitter and ITV are at the heart of so many conversations across the UK, so being able to bring the biggest cultural and sporting moments to users on an even greater scale is incredibly exciting. Since the start of our partnership with ITV back in 2018, we’ve been incredibly impressed by the creativity of their editorial unit alongside the commercial aptitude and collaboration of their sales teams. Through Twitter Amplify and the addition of Twitter Next activations to this partnership, advertisers will have even more opportunities to engage with the very best of ITV’s programming in even more impactful ways.” Theo Luke, senior director, global content partnerships at Twitter.
“We’re really excited about continuing ITV’s long-standing partnership with Twitter. The Twitter Amplify product will be available on some of the nation’s most loved and talked about shows including the FIFA World Cup. Over the years Twitter has been a powerful tool in driving conversations and engaging fans around some of our favorite TV moments. This is a fantastic opportunity for advertisers to reach new audiences and extend their relationship with ITV’s content.” Pathman Ruthirapathy, ITV’s digital partnerships controller
Fox Sports will offer interactive pre and post-match coverage on Twitter for every single match broadcasted during the Qatar 2022 World Cup as well as the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
In a bid to draw a larger audience, Fox Sports hopes that the delivery of exclusive content around the competition would encourage more fans to tune into the coverage of both the tournaments.
The collaboration announced between the two companies would see them work closely moving forward, the parties would jointly offer near-live video highlights, original content, interactive Q&A’s and audio sessions on Twitter spaces.
⚽️ Twitter 🤝 @FOXSports ⚽️ Beyond thrilled to announce the final portion of our amazing content plan for the Men’s and Women’s World Cup tournaments. We’ll have In-Match Previews and Live Pre-Game Shows from EVERY SINGLE MATCH 🔥 pic.twitter.com/PjX8upvbTC
With the delivery of content exclusively on Twitter, the social media giants through this initiative would like to see increased engagement with fans on their platform hence they chalked out a plan to produce and deliver unique content.
“We are excited to expand our collaboration with Twitter by doing what we do best in leading the way with innovative sports coverage and original digital content,” “These new offerings will bring fans the FIFA World Cup experience wherever they are by keeping them engaged with a taste of the excitement while encouraging them to Tweet and watch the rest of the match on Fox Sports.” Edward Hartman, senior vice president of digital partnerships and wagering at Fox Sports
“Collaborating with Fox Sports to bring fans the opportunity to preview match action on Twitter during both the men’s and women’s World Cup is something we’ve never done before,” “We’re thrilled to bring this exclusive content to the timeline.” TJ Adeshola, head of global content partnerships at Twitter.
Twitter has expanded its portfolio of services to help drive activity and revenue opportunities around sporting events hence they have announced a tie-up with the National Football League and they have announced a multi-year expansion of its partnership with the Women’s National Basketball Association.
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:
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.
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.
Exciting news as Twitter and Meta prepare for Super Bowl LVI on February 13th in Los Angeles with new fan interaction events on each social media site. Of course, as most of you know, the NFL championship game is a big deal for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. It will generate a large amount of activity from both individuals and corporations. In the meantime, social media has grown as an important channel for the league, its teams, athletes, and broadcast partners.
The NFL’s excitement is only growing, with the NFL divisional round last month seeing a 58% spike in tweets, a 48% increase in unique writers, and a 27% increase in impressions. Twitter is urging users to post their predictions for the game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams. As part of this incentive, they have promised to display a selection of tweets on the SoFi Stadium’s LED ceiling.
Twitter has certainly been keeping busy, collaborating with athletes on a billboard campaign. As part of this unique setup, they are showing predictive tweets from NFL players like Patrick Mahomes and Leonard Fournette, who expressed desires to participate in the Super Bowl years before such wishes came true.
Meta’s contribution
Meta has also been busy. As part of their continued effort to develop a metaverse across their many platforms, they are launching new 3D avatars for Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram. This function is now available in the US, Canada, and Mexico, with plans to expand its availability in the future. Users can dress their avatar in official Bengals or Rams gear, as well as neutral Super Bowl colours.
Although largely aesthetic, the relationship with the NFL demonstrates how Meta’s metaverse might become an increasingly vital avenue for sports organisations as it grows in scope and development.
Meta revamped virtual reality avatars last year to make them more expressive, customizable, and diverse. They are currently expanding avatars to better represent the billions of distinct people on the globe. This isn’t all; they’ll also be introducing limited-edition clothes for NFL fans to dress up their avatars in to support their favourite teams.
The PGA Tour has expanded its collaboration with Twitter to include unique content for the social media giant’s Spaces live audio function. Throughout the year, exciting new Spaces will be in development featuring current players and industry professionals discussing the activity on the PGA Tour, including the FedExCup.
These ‘Tour Spaces’ will make their debut during the Honda Classic, which will be from February 21st to February 27th at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Florida. The PGA Tour’s official Twitter account will provide fans with coverage that will be available globally.
As part of this deal, the PGA Tour will continue to post daily real-time highlights from its tournaments on Twitter. Furthermore, the organisation will create individualised and player-specific highlights. Not only that, but there are weekly Twitter Moments summarising tournament action, which can be sponsored through Twitter Amplify.
The PGA Tour and Twitter collaborated in 2015 to establish Amplify, which allows advertisers to promote PGA Tour video content. Following that, these two major institutions worked together to present live tournament coverage of the first two rounds of the 2016 FedExCup Playoffs. Following that, they pledged to provide live PGA Tour coverage from select events during the 2016/2017 season.
Twitter Spaces is becoming a larger part of the social media content mix for the sports business. This season, the NFL and NBA plan to have at least 20 and 40 Spaces. Meanwhile, ESPN was the first publication to organise a ticketed Space in December. Furthermore, Fox Sports increased its partnership with Twitter last month. They will integrate Spaces to increase social media coverage of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar this year and the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2023.
As a result of this collaboration, the golf community on Twitter has developed significantly. This year, weekly Spaces will bring them closer than ever before to events and expertise. Meanwhile, the PGA Tour has extended its multi-year broadcast agreement with SiriusXM radio. SiriusXM will continue to broadcast event coverage on its PGA Tour Radio channel for subscribers throughout the US until 2024.
Throughout the season, SiriusXM will carry live coverage of all 38 PGA Tour tournaments. As part of the contract, the Players Championship, FedExCup Playoffs, and Presidents Cup will have hole-by-hole commentary and expert analysis. A number of exclusive news, interview, and analysis shows have been added to the schedule.
The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) has named Velocity Worldwide as its official global work platform. Velocity Worldwide announced a partnership with the LPGA Tour and the LET to highlight its players’ global significance through greater narrative opportunities and player recognition.
These figures take into account likes, reports, and comments on posts from clubs in six countries on the three major social networks.
There were 3.66 billion interactions in 862 thousand posts. This impressive figure represents the total number of interactions from first division clubs in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the three most popular social networks among supporters, throughout 2021.
Brazil, the most populous country among those studied – with 212.6 million residents – gained slightly over 2.3 billion and accounted for 62.8% of total interactions in the study. Along with Brazil, despite being more populated than Argentina, Mexico, with 129 million inhabitants, added up to 384.6 million interactions, trailing the 617 million interactions produced by Argentines, whose country has roughly 46 million individuals.
Flamengo’s success
Flamengo really stands out among the clubs. The Rio de Janeiro club led the three major social networks with 754.3 million interactions despite failing to win the Brazilian Championship, Copa Libertadores da América, and Copa do Brasil, the three major competitions on the Brazilian club calendar.
Credit: Alexandre Vidal / Flamengo Flickr
Of course, we couldn’t forget Bernardo Monteiro, Communications Director at Clube de Regatas Flamengo, who praised the big numbers and spoke a little about the association’s commitment to the digital universe:
“Since we took over the management of the networks, in January 2019, we were committed to consolidating Flamengo’s hegemony in social networks. We have the biggest fan base in the world, with more than 42 million fans and we believe that, by delivering better quality content, in multiple formats of consumption and with increasing coverage, fans not only get closer to the club but also to use Flamengo’s official channels as their main source of information and to be possible, the consistency of the work needs to be maintained”, stated Bernardo Monteiro.
Bernardo highlighted that consistency of material in many formats, such as journalistic content and entertainment content, as well as other genres, ensure growth and audience retention.
“The results shown in the metric rankings are true reveals of the stratospheric engagement of the Flamengo fans!”, he concluded.
River: the Argentinian highlight
River Plate of Argentina is another club that came out on top in 2021. When we consider that five out of every six persons are Brazilians and only one is argentine, the Argentine club has a strong engagement rate with 319 million interactions throughout the year.
In fact, River Plate, the second-most-interacted-with club on Twitter, is the only team to break through Brazil’s domination on the social network. Surprisingly, Boca Juniors is the next team on Twitter outside the Brazilians, at 12th place.
Mexico, with a population 2.6 times greater than Argentina, saw much higher numbers on Facebook, but not on Instagram, where it experienced 2.4 times lower numbers. Belonging to North America, unlike the other countries analyzed, Mexico experienced a change in behavior in interactions throughout 2021. In the first half of the year, Facebook typically had more interactions across the months than Instagram. However, the situation progressively shifted, and Instagram concluded 2021 with 194.3 million engagements, compared to Facebook’s 151.1 million.
Video Views
It is vital to note that when we talk about interactions, we only take into account likes, reposts, and comments on posts and videos. Interactions are not counted for video views.
Using Instagram and Facebook, the six countries total 4.43 billion views of slightly more than 115,000 videos posted in 2021. It is wrong to believe that the number of views is bigger since Instagram interactions are considerably more.
Facebook has a superior track record with 2.53 billion views than Instagram, which has 1.89 billion. Mexico is primarily responsible for this disparity, as Facebook had 1.14 billion views compared to only 104 million for Instagram. In addition to Mexico, Chile and Colombia were among the countries with the highest number of users on Facebook. Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay already exhibit the opposite pattern when it comes to video consumption
This month’s look at the performance of our LATAM club rankings on the key social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram revealed a few surprises. October brought fantastic news, as the Spooky month exceeded September by 13 million interactions. Surprisingly, Brazil, the nation with the most interactions among those studied, was the only one with a more pronounced reduction in comparison to the others. This country received slightly more than 5 million fewer Instagram interactions and nearly 1 million fewer Twitter interactions. While their Brazilian neighbours declined, the Argentines rose to second place, with 47.4 million interactions on Instagram Stories, and almost reached an impressive 49 million in May.
Flamengo has surpassed the 4 million daily engagement threshold on Instagram for the second time. It ensured the club’s 10th place in front of Club América on these two days, and its monthly Instagram performance. Interactions on the 13th were captured in a video recorded behind the goal during Andreas Pereira’s spectacular free-kick against Juevntude. The win over rival Atlético-MG, the Championship leader, the other day was a fantastic effort. Flamengo’s chances of becoming the tri champion were maintained thanks to this stunning victory.
Unfortunately for Brazil, there was a drop of little more than 5 million Instagram engagements compared to September’s total of 163 million. The losses of Flamengo (-9 million) and Corinthians (-12 million) underline this performance. In October, though, there were some bright spots. Atlético-MG and Santos both gained 4 million. Not only that, but among other cities, São Paulo gained 2 million, International got 1.4 million, and Fortaleza gained 1.3 million, helping to offset the loss.
Argentina
We returned to the stadium after 583 days away from the squad to watch a derby against their main rival, Boca Juniors, which they won 2-1. River Plate was the only team – aside from Flamengo! – to have more than 4 million interactions in a single day, which delighted the fans. In total, 4.05 million interactions were recorded, putting Corinthians (BRA) in second place by little more than 400 thousand interactions.
Another significant aspect was River Plate’s dominance on Facebook. They gained 3.3 million interactions compared to 3 million for Flamengo, the team that usually appears in first place. When we consider that Argentina had 5.88 million overall interactions on Facebook, with 3.3 million from River Plate and 656 thousand from Boca Juniors, the data reveals a concentration of concerning interactions and a need for other major football teams to increase content and engage with their audiences.
Previously Facebook and Instagram had the same number of interactions relating to Liga MX teams. But Instagram has begun to stand out, and by October, it had narrowed the gap to just over 8 million: (17.55 million x 9.66 million).
While the monthly record in Brazil and Argentina was over 4 million interactions, Mexico’s monthly peak on October 3rd was 789 thousand interactions. This monthly high was achieved thanks to Club America’s 2-0 Liga MX victory over Pumas in the 12th round.
Video consumption
Brazilian teams make the most use of videos on their Instagram pages. There were 2050 clubs, compared to 1241 Mexican clubs and over 1000 Argentine clubs. Brazilian clubs received approximately 100 million views, 96.4 million to be exact. One thing to remember is that interactions do not include views. In comparison, the 1000 Argentine videos earned 33.37 million views, while the 1241 Mexican videos received only 7.63 million. This impressive result accounted for 50% of Club America’s submissions, which totaled 87 videos.
Colombia
Colombian clubs were the only ones who did not rank among the top 20 on social media. With the exception of Atletico Nacional, which has won the 17th position on our rankings. The country has yet to regain its interaction rates prior to the devastating protests, and it is the sixth month in a row that the country has failed to surpass a million Twitter interactions.
Twitter has brought a lot of new feature releases into the Twitter world as it refuses to slow down its ongoing desire for updating. This major social media network has now launched a number of new initiatives aimed at better serving the conversations and communities that take place on its platform, including support for cryptocurrency tipping and NFT authentication.
With these new features, the app will be able to better assist creators who work with non-fungible tokens or NFTs. This new feature is possible by the increasing popularity of NFT. This popularity is thanks to artists are now generating NFTs of their work, which is sold on NFT markets like as OpenSea, Rarible, Foundation, SuperRare, and others.
This platform is also expecting to offer NFT authentication in the near future. With this assistance, NFT creators will be able to connect their crypto wallets to Twitter. This would allow creators to stay on track while also displaying their NFTs on this well-known platform. Users may still have to wait, as this is still in the early phases and Twitter has yet to explain how it will operate. Twitter is also thought to be experimenting with a number of other techniques to assist authorized collection producers to stand out in the eyes of other users. All is yet to be determined.
More in the Tip Jar
Of course, Twitter has more to say about cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin tipping support has also been a big topic. Twitter’s “Tip Jar” function was first released as a prototype product in May. Users can make and receive one-time payments through third-party services such as PayPal, Venmo, and others using this metaphorical jar. The service will now be available to all users worldwide on iOS. Android support is coming soon and will include support for tipping using Bitcoin.
There will also be a lot of new ways for Bitcoin tips to function. Users will be able to get Bitcoin tips by adding a Bitcoin Lightning wallet or their Bitcoin address. According to Twitter, lightning wallets are popular among cryptocurrency users because of their minimal transaction fees. Twitter’s implementation makes use of Strike, a payments tool built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network that enables anyone to transfer and receive Bitcoin for free and immediately. This ingenious Tip Jar will also include GoFundMe and the Brazilian mobile payments provider PicPay.
And that’s not all. Twitter also unveiled additional tools for users to protect their security and well-being on the platform, including offensive discussion filters. Twitter is attempting to address some of the platform’s most chronic issues. One of which includes the lack of mechanisms for the platform’s most engaged users to grow their following and generate income from their contributions. Negativity and harassment are also long-standing difficulties.
With this in mind, Twitter has included additional security features such as “remove yourself from a conversation,” which allows the user to exit a Twitter thread that contains their name. Users will soon be able to block accounts using automatic methods, according to the network.
Twitter made another exciting announcement for its ever-expanding platform last week; this platform has now taken the next step by launching a live test of its new ‘Communities‘ option. Users will be able to exchange tweets with a select group of app users thanks to this new community feature. This new function will allow users to avoid continually publicly broadcasting or sharing all of their tweets with all of their followers.
These communities are to function as niche, topic-based spaces. On this social media platform, these areas allow people with similar interests to share and discuss relevant tweets with others. It is possible to pick a specific community from within the tweet composer, allowing users to tailor their tweets.
imagine an alternate timeline where everyone just gets you
say hi to Communities—the place to connect with people who Tweet like you. testing now on iOS and web, Android soon! pic.twitter.com/TJdKwUa4D2
This function was created to provide a solution for users who believe that certain topics are not for everyone; everyone enjoys a little secrecy once in a while! Users can utilize ‘Communities’ to tweet specifically to a group rather than to everyone. Only members of the same community can respond and join the conversation, keeping it small and relevant.
Although you can only tweet to your community for a targeted in-depth discussion, keep in mind that these pages are public. Users are still in the public domain, and this feature allows users to search for all active communities. All talks will also be accessible through a new ‘Communities’ option at the bottom of the platform’s app.
Similar to Facebook groups or Reddit threads, this new tool allows for more topic-oriented conversations. It also takes Twitter further away from its core notion of a “public square”. Even though being a public hub has been the app’s driving force since it was founded in 2006, a change in direction could be beneficial for its growth in the future.
More updates to come
Twitter is testing a number of different types of platform updates. The site is also developing a feature called “Facets,” which will allow users to create multiple identities under one profile. Not only that, but it also adds a new audience management option to the tweet composer, allowing users to share their tweets with only their “Trusted Friends”.
This new update may not only eliminate the need for extra accounts but will also push people to tweet more regularly. Users will now be able to share their thoughts on various topics with specific, interested audiences in the app, rather than feeling limited by the broader audience approach.
