The new research by EIS and Virality reveals the digital communication potential of footballers and football clubs in Italy
There was a time when footballers were considered icons and inspirations for different generations of fans. Well, that time not only still resists, but has even expanded into space, which is now also virtual, and allows footballers to extend their cultural leadership from real society to online communities.
The sports management agency EIS and the digital intelligence platform Virality conducted a research on the Instagram profiles of football players and teams that play in our main leagues, to find out what lies behind the diamond-shaped ball’s digital fan-bases.
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. The exceptions are Hellas Verona, US Lecce, SSC Napoli, Torino FC and AC Milan (where, however, Zlatan Ibrahimovic was not considered because he does not appear in the top 11 of Transfert Markt – see methodological note at the bottom).
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 Transfert Markt. 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%). The question of the target is very sensitive because it can have various implications in terms of marketing.
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.
The clubs that do better in terms of engagement are those of women’s football, capable of registering a fair 2.58%, even if the figure is somewhat spoiled by the small number of official accounts (only 4 out of the 10 teams that make up the A league). With the exception of Pomigliano, which is not represented on Instagram, all the other women’s teams rely on the profiles of the homologous men’s team. This is the case of Inter, Milan, Sampdoria, Parma and Sassuolo. Roma Women deserves a separate mention, which with 4.71% is definitely the most engaging.
A final figure concerns the frequency of publication. Footballers prove to be quite lazy, with an average number of contents ranging from 2 to 6 every 15 days. On the contrary, on this front the Clubs are much more committed, animated by a greater communicative urgency. Their average ranges from 20 to 70 posts every 15 days.
Up to here the quantitative analysis of public data. Thanks to Virality, however, we can go further and draw up a special quality ranking. Through the weighted crossing of a series of values, Virality is in fact able to attribute a “score” to each profile monitored 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.
The same applies to Serie A clubs, which, although with lower scores than the players, have more efficient profiles than those of the other categories analysed. In this case, the best are the provincial teams, such as Spezia, Palermo and Cremonese.
The topics covered by the players in their posts deserve a final insight. It is interesting to note that, for several A and B players, in addition to football there is an interest in fashion and (albeit followed at a considerable distance) by family, food and marketing. Among women, on the other hand, there is almost no room for other topics than football, evidently considered a “pleasant obsession”.
“The research clearly demonstrates how Instagram has become one of the places of choice through which to consume football content. – comments Enrico Gelfi, founder of EIS – In particular, the profiles of individual players, real media, are effective entertainment tools. Even if the differences between categories and gender are not lacking, quite the contrary. And I’m not just referring to the distance below, in some cases even huge. Let’s take the topics covered: also speaking of fashion, family, food and marketing, footballers demonstrate a propensity to assert themselves even outside football, while female footballers, more monothematic, do not seem ready to tell themselves in a casual and complete way, evidently still having to affirm their role within society”.