The sports management agency EIS and the digital intelligence platform Virality conducted a research on the Instagram profiles of footballers and teams that play in our main championships, to find out what lies behind the digital fan-bases of those who are increasingly influencers and sources of inspiration for different generations. To begin with, we discover that players have much more followers than clubs. As regards Serie A, in 15 clubs out of 20 there is at least one player with more followers than the club he belongs to. The case of AC Monza is emblematic, which has 4 more followed players than its official profile.
Quantitatively, players who played in a foreign league last season are awarded. This is the case of the Brazilian Mateus Henrique and the Spanish (on loan from Arsenal) Pablo Marì, who have more followers, for example, than teammates Domenico Berardi and Matteo Pessina, although “worth” much less according to TransfertMarkt. Analyzing the composition of their fan base, we discover that they are followed by both old fans abroad and new fans in Italy.
It is interesting to note that the main target of all players is Generation Z (18 – 24 years old), while that of the Clubs is Millennials (25 – 34 years old). All A and B players have a predominantly male fan base (over 60%). The same goes for the Clubs, where, however, the male/female disproportion is 70/30. However, there are those who are exceptions: the Azzurro Matteo Pessina has a majority of female followers (53%). Contrary to what one might think, even among women there is a slight preponderance of male followers (the average is 52%), but the target they mainly address is higher: 25-34 years. In general, there are few female footballers who have a predominantly female fan base.
On average, the engagement rate of Serie A players, i.e. the ratio between the number of followers and interactions with content (likes, comments, shares and saves) is 10.3%, much higher than that of clubs, which is stopped at 2.5%. The value of footballers is in itself very significant if we consider that the average engagement rate of an influencer marketing campaign is 4/5%.
On this front, women also record good data, considering the average of 6.90%, but it is the Serie B players with almost 12% average engagement rate who boast the best relationship with their community. This exploit could depend on the fact that, mainly representing provincial teams, the B players are able to better embody the link with the territory. It is no coincidence that their fan base is over 70% resident in Italy (against, for example, less than 50% of Serie A). The footballer who stands out above all is the 19-year-old Turkish Emirhan İlkhan, who recently moved from Turin to Sampdoria, who manages to involve almost one person in two of his community made up of 114,000 followers.
Through the weighted crossing of a series of values, Virality is able to attribute a “score” to each monitored profile and from there draw up a ranking. In this way we discover, for example, that Serie A players, with an average of 64.90 points, have Instagram profiles that perform better than those in Serie B (56.17) and women (52.93). The palm of the best is contested by Sofyan Amrabat with 88 points, Lautaro Martinez with 85 and Sandro Tonali with 83, all militants in the top championship. It is evident that the exploit achieved by these players at the recent World Cup in Qatar weighed heavily on this value, which takes into account all the most sensitive indicators for the platform. Only in September, for example, “Il Toro” had 7 less, while the Moroccan from Fiorentina even traveled around 70 points.