Social media study: Portugal and Instagram win the 2018 World Cup on the Internet
Who will win the FIFA World Cup on social media? Which team is the most active? Which players are setting the tone? And which channels have the most followers? Bernet Relations and Ecco have analyzed all the player profiles for every team.
Over the next four weeks, 32 countries will play for the World Cup trophy. Portugal can already celebrate a victory: the footballers of the current European champions have a total of over 360 million followers on the three major platforms Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Cristiano Ronaldo is in first place among the individual players. The Portuguese superstar has 320 million fans and followers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Thanks to Ronaldo, Portugal is in first place in the ranking, followed by Brazil and Spain with 350 million and 333 million followers respectively. The Swiss team has a total of 11 million followers, putting it in 19th place, while Iceland comes last in the overall ranking. The players from the Nordic island nation have less than one million followers.
Instagram is the number one
The World Cup players have a total of 2.5 billion followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 89% of all players are active on social networks and have at least one account. On Instagram alone, the players have a total of around 1.1 billion followers. This corresponds to a share of 43 percent. Instagram is therefore the number one platform used, well ahead of Facebook and Twitter. 81% of the 736 players have an Instagram account.
World Cup stars as influencers
Each team has its own social media star. The top 32 teams have a combined total of around 1.2 billion followers. This means that 32 players account for 47% of the total number of followers. Top players turn their own name into a brand and are among the most important influencers in the digital world. Almost all professional footballers worldwide now use social networks; only 10% are not officially active on social media.
Shaqiri at the top
The number of followers of Swiss footballers varies. Mario Gavranović is at the bottom of the Swiss list with just over 8,600 followers on Instagram. The number one Swiss player is Xherdan Shaqiri with 4 million followers. However, this means he has 80 times fewer followers than Christiano Ronaldo.
About the studyThe social media study was conducted by the international PR network Ecco and Bernet Relations. For the study, the companies analyzed the social media activities of all football players from the 32 World Cup participants. A total of 736 players worldwide. The number of followers and fans on the social platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were added together for the analysis.
