The Social Champions League the Top 10 Football Teams on Social Media

The Social Champions League The Top 10 Football Teams on Social Media

CONTENT QUICK FINDER

PAGE Mad about Soccer: A Worldwide Business 04

PAGE Twitter: The Right Hashtags at the Right Moment Top 10: Followers 06 Top 10: Engagement vs Reach Top Hashtags Top Results

PAGE Facebook: Celebrities Double the Value Top 10: Fans 12 Top 10: Engagement vs Reach Top Celebrities Top Results

PAGE Instagram: Images are the most engaging content Top 10: Followers 18 Top 10: Engagement vs Reach Top Emojis Top Results

PAGE Events: It’s Not all About the Followers 24 El Clásico vs Champions League: Who Wins?

PAGE Wrap up: Which was the Most Social Team of the 28 Quarter?

PAGE Methodology 2017 © TALKWALKER 30 Mad About Soccer: A Worldwide Business

Photo credit : Flickr/ Joe Penna (changes were made) THE SOCIAL CHAMPIONS LEAGUE - TOP 10 FOOTBALL TEAMS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

From San Francisco to Melbourne, But it’s not just about the European football teams have numbers, trends are also millions of followers and fans important. Our objective was to around the globe. Just consider find useful insights to understand that during May alone, there the reasons behind these numbers were more than 10 million (spoiler: Real Madrid collected conversations around the more than 106M interactions Champions League final teams, in just three months!), and the Juventus and Real Madrid, from all digital strategies that lie behind over the world (below). them, allowing teams to convert followers into fans/consumers In this report, Talkwalker and gain the attention of sponsors and TOK.tv analyzed the willing to invest. performance of the world’s top 20 football teams (the full list Which are the most used hashtags is available in Methodology) to on Twitter? Which team logos rank the 10 highest performers get the most exposure during on Twitter, Facebook and events? Do teams use emojis on Instagram. The ranking was Instagram? The vast majority of created by analyzing the reach football fans on social media are and engagement on official millennials, who interact with the channels as well as their follower world around them through their numbers/fan base growth. smartphones. Which teams are reaching them effectively? © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Twitter - The Right Hashtags at the Right Moment

Football teams tend to use channel to introduce the hashtag, Twitter mostly to publish news whose importance and value was and updates. Press conferences, immediately clear to the teams transfer news, live updates which made them part of their during games are the main topics digital strategies. Hashtags can tweeted both in a team’s home drive conversations and create language and in others. engagement...but which team makes the most out of them? Twitter was the first social media © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Followers - Who’s Growing the Fastest (and Who’s Dropped out of the Top 10)

FOLLOWERS Q4 2016

FOLLOWERS Q2 2017

Compared to Q1 of 2016, Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe are the two teams that have dropped out of the top 10. Juventus is the fastest growing team of 2017, thanks to being champions of of Serie A and reaching the Champions League final. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Top 10 - Engagement vs Reach © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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In terms of engagement, Juventus had a different strategy to other teams: while Real Madrid and Barcelona use match or team related hashtags like #HalaMadrid or #ForcaBarca, Juventus were more creative, tapping into the emotions of fans with hashtags like #ItsTime (created for the Champions League final) which resonated with fans.

Top Hashtags on Twitter

The most discussed topics on #MUFC plays a big role too: even Twitter highlight the “classic” though Manchester United didn’t hashtags of the Spanish giants - win the Premier League, they #HalaMadrid or #ForçaBarça -, remain the most engaging team of while for Juve #ItsTime was used the English league. more than their main hashtag #finoallafine. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Top Results - The Most Engaging Posts on Twitter

The top 3 posts generating the most engagement on Twitter, are related to Real Madrid and Chelsea winning their respective national leagues, while third place is Manchester United’s tweet in support of the victims of the Manchester terrorist attack.

Real Madrid’s tweet was shared so extensively that even a month after winning the Champions League it was still generating engagement. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

10 Photo credit : Flickr/ Jan S0L0 (changes were made) THE SOCIAL CHAMPIONS LEAGUE - TOP 10 FOOTBALL TEAMS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook Celebrities Double the Value

Facebook is the most used social fans want to take a look at what network in the world with 2 their favorite players do off the billion active users per month and field, know their opinions and see more than 300 million photos if and how they interact with each uploaded every day. Football is other. Cristiano Ronaldo alone has one of the interests that really more fans than his team, so it’s drives activity. Looking at these 40 little wonder many teams focus Facebook stats , we can see that their digital strategies on celebrity the most liked fan pages in the players. world include Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid CF and FC Barcelona. Compared to Twitter, Facebook, is a more emotional social network: © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Fans - Is it all about Winning?

FANS Q4 2016

FANS Q2 2017

At the end of the 2016/17 season, Real Madrid became the global fan leader on Facebook, surpassing FC Barcelona who were number one at the end of 2016. But in terms of follower growth, it is Juventus who came out on top at +19,4%, with only PSG coming close at +14.3%. AC Milan drop out of the top 10 as Borussia Dortmund jump up to 10th. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Top 10 - Engagement vs Reach © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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But engaging fans is more important than having a lot of them. FC Barcelona, for example have wider visibility but lower engagement than Real Madrid (106,37M), who used their victorious season, especially their Champions League final victory, to drive fan engagement.

Top Celebrities - The Social Champions

Among the champions, it’s no Borussia Dortmund’s Thomas surprise that Real Madrid and Tuchel and even Manchester Barcelona’s stars shine brighter United’s former manager Alex than the others, but coaches like Ferguson are mentioned frequently Real Madrid’s Zinedine Zidane, as well. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Top Results - The Most Engaging Posts on Facebook

The three most engaging posts on Facebook are all dominated by Real Madrid’s success in the Champions League. No space for other teams, sorry! © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

THE SOCIAL CHAMPIONS LEAGUE - TOP 10 FOOTBALL TEAMS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Instagram - Images are the Most Engaging Content Type

Instagram has more than Analyzing teams’ activities on 700 million monthly active their channels, it becomes clear users, significantly fewer than that although they publish less Facebook’s 2 billion, but still often compared to Facebook remarkable if we consider that the and Twitter, they get higher social network is growing faster engagement. Why? There is and frequently adds new features. nothing better than a great pic of our favorite team, celebrating the best moments of a match. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Instagram Followers - The Turkish March

FOLLOWERS Q4 2016

FOLLOWERS Q2 2017

As was the case on Facebook, on Instagram too, Real Madrid surpasses its blaugrana rival. The surprise teams are Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe as these two giants of Turkish football join the top 10. The channel’s stellar growth is impacting the social activity of football teams too. They have a higher level of engagement and more variation in fans/followers growth when compared to Facebook and Twitter, probably thanks to the increasing adoption of Stories as a tool for fan engagement. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Top 10 - Engagement vs Reach © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Generally speaking, the In fact, analyzing teams accounts’ engagement level on Instagram is activities, it emerges that FC double that of Facebook and FC Barcelona is the most reactive Barcelona is the team creating the team on Instagram, regularly most interactions. responding to fan comments on their account.

Top Emojis on Instagram

Instagram is more than images combinations which match teams’ and videos, it is also emotions, in colors such as black and white for fact emojis bring fans’ comments Juventus and blue and red for FC to life, thanks also to color Barcelona. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Top results - The Most Engaging Posts on Instagram

Like Facebook, Real Madrid dominates the leaderboard: two out of the top three posts are related to the Champions League, but there is also space for Cristiano Ronaldo’s 400th goal celebration. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

THE SOCIAL CHAMPIONS LEAGUE - TOP 10 FOOTBALL TEAMS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Events - It’s Not All About the followers

If you sponsor an event, should it be El Clásico or the Champions League?

Big football events represent a What are the right metrics to use huge opportunity for brands to when evaluating and how should gain visibility but how should brands encourage communities brands invest their budgets? Is it to get involved? It’s not just about better to choose games such as El follower numbers and as we’ve Clásico, where the biggest teams said before, it’s really engagement are involved or choose a whole that’s the key. competition, even if it means being exposed to communities which are not as big? © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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El Clàsico

For the most hotly anticipated Let’s take a look at the results match in Spain, the two historical between April 23 and 24 in rivals played hard on the field and terms of reach and engagement, on social media. generated on the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram channels of the teams. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Champions League Final

On June 3rd, Cardiff hosted the between June 3 and 4 in terms of Champions League final, which reach and engagement generated saw Real Madrid take on Juventus. on the Twitter, Facebook and Let’s take a look at the results Instagram channels of the teams. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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The results make it clear that El Using Talkwalker’s image Clásico has more potential reach: recognition technology we Real Madrid and Barcelona have analyzed which of the 30K brands 179.5 million and 175 million tracked by the platform, were the fans/followers respectively, while most visible during the Champions Juventus “only” have 41.9 million. League final. Heineken took top If we analyze the engagement spot thanks to all the images level of the two games, then the shared by thirsty fans. #UCLfinal reaches 52 million interactions. Fans are used to sharing their emotions while watching games, and sometimes brands are part of the game too. It is even possible to understand which are the most mentioned brands by analyzing images posted during games. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Wrap Up: Which was the Most Social Team of the Quarter?

Real Madrid and Barcelona Paris Saint-Germain is a good dominate without a doubt, in example of how the number of terms of growth and engagement, fans/followers is not enough but the strength of teams also to create a true relationship results from their ability to involve with fans. PSG did a good job of and create loyal fans, even increasing follower numbers but tapping into emotional reactions struggled to generate the same as Juventus did. levels of engagement. By this measure it was Juventus, thanks The “Turkish march” and to the effective use of hashtags, engagement on Instagram and FC Barcelona, the only team demonstrate that images are the that regularly responds to fans in most powerful tool for interaction, comments, that stood out. especially when champions tell the story. © TALKWALKER 2017 TALKWALKER

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Methodology

Based on results from TOK.tv’s content has been perceived and #TOKFootballReport, more than shared by a channel’s audience, 20 top teams were selected and calculated using the number based on the number of fans/ of likes and shares on Facebook, followers on Twitter, Facebook and the number of likes and retweets Instagram. on Twitter, and the number of Instagram likes; the reach, The official channels (Twitter, meaning the total number of users Facebook and Instagram) of these reached and based on how many 20 teams have then been analyzed people have potentially viewed the through Talkwalker’s social content. listening platform and monitored for three months (April - June Brand logo analysis was 2017). conducted using Talkwalker’s image recognition technology, The main metrics considered for base on a deep learning the ranking are: fans/followers technology which allows the growth, obtained by comparing platform to recognize more than 2Q 2017 data with 4Q 2016 30,000 monitored brands. data; engagement, to track how

The 20 teams analyzed for each channel

Facebook: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Chelsea, FC Bayern München, Arsenal, Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus, Milan, Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund, Atlético de Madrid, Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, Roma, Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City, Inter, Besiktas

Twitter: Real Madrid, Barcelona,Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Galatasaray, Liverpool, Fenerbahçe, Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, Juventus, FC Bayern

Instagram: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United, FC Bayern München, Arsenal, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus, Manchester City, Liverpool, Galatasaray, Borussia Dortmund, Milan, Atlético de Madrid, Fenerbahçe, Inter, AFC Bournemouth, Beşiktaş, Tottenham Hotspur, Cagliari 2017 TALKWALKER

30 The team behind the #SocialChampions report

Talkwalker is one of the world’s leading social media analytics companies. STAY Its cutting-edge technology provides actionable social media insights through real-time social listening and advanced social media analytics. Talkwalker helps marketers to prove the value of their TUNED ! social efforts and enhances the speed and accuracy of business decision- making. www.talkwalker.com

Talkwalker’s state of the art social media analytics platform monitors and analyzes online conversations on social networks, news websites, blogs, forums and more, in over 187 languages. Its servers process 500 million posts from 150 million websites every day.

The Talkwalker platform is used by over 900 clients around the world, including Microsoft, HPE, Benetton and communications specialists such as Edelman, Peppercomm, Publicis, Ogilvy, and Weber Shandwick.

TOK.tv is the fastest growing sports social network with more than 22M users worldwide.

TOK.tv let Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Tottenham Hotspur, Serie A TIM, Lega B, GuoAn Beijing and more fans to share their passion by talking and videocalling their friends, taking Talkwalker EMEA social selfies and sharing stadium cheer and fun sounds. +352 20 33 35 3 43

On TOK.tv website a Facebook daily ranking for European football teams is Talkwalker US available at +1 646 712 9441 www.tok.tv/tokfootballreportdaily Put Social Data Intelligence To Work