The Sports Examiner: Team USA led all countries with 95.9 million social-media engagements; Instagram was the most-engaged platform

From our sister site, TheSportsExaminer.com

The British research and content agency Redtorch issued a comprehensive report on social-media traffic for National Olympic Committees during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, showing Instagram the most-engaged platform and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee with the most traffic.

The study, created for the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), monitored 725 social-media pages from all 206 National Olympic Committees across five platforms: Facebook, Instagram, X (ex-Twitter), TikTok and YouTube from 12 July to 25 August.

The U.S. had the largest team and had the biggest impact, with a sensational 95.9 million total engagements, with Brazil not far behind at 77.5 million total engagements. Those two NOCs were far ahead of the rest of the world; the top 10:

● 1. 95.5 million: United States
● 2. 77.3 million: Brazil
● 3. 19.5 million: Great Britain
● 4. 15.6 million: Japan
● 5. 13.9 million: France

● 6. 10.3 million: Germany
● 7. 8.4 million: Czech Republic
● 8. 8.0 million: Australia
● 9. 7.8 million: Canada
● 10. 6.9 million: Spain

This is an area to watch, as only 37 of the 206 NOCs had total engagements of a million or more. Lots of growth potential.

The USOPC was busy on all five platforms, adding 2.1 million followers across platforms:

● 63.7 million on Instagram (rank: 1)
● 13.6 million on TikTok (rank: 1)
● 11.2 million on Facebook (rank: 1)
● 7.4 million on X (rank: 2)

Owing to NBC’s exclusive television rights, the USOPC had very little presence on YouTube, but was wild on TikTok and led all NOCs with 173.3 million combined video views during the Games, on 241 posts. Great Britain was second at 138.8 million.

In terms of platforms used, Instagram was the clear winner in terms of engagements, but was not the favorite destination in terms of fan usage:

● 1. 66.0% for Instagram (230.7 million)
● 2. 12.0% for Facebook (41.4 million)
● 3. 11.5% for TikTok (40.3 million)
● 4. 10.5% for X (36.8 million)
● 5. 0.2% for YouTube (558,300, owing to exclusive TV rights)

The survey tracked 58.8 million total fans during the Paris Games, with Facebook still the most popular platform across all users:

● 1. 24.3 million fans on Facebook (24,500 posts)
● 2. 15.2 million fans on Instagram (20,800 posts)
● 3. 9.5 million fans on TikTok (4,400 posts)
● 4. 8.5 million fans on X (26,400 posts)
● 5. 1.3 million fans on YouTube (2,300 posts)

Noted: “Facebook remained the second-highest in posts (24.5k) and had the most fans (26.3m), still the primary platform for 190/206 NOCs (compared to 164/206 on Instagram).”

The Brazilian performance on social media was amazing, considering it sent 277 Olympians to Paris, compared with 592 for the U.S., 573 for France and 461 for Australia. Yet, the Comite Olimpico Brasil generated 77.3 million engagements, second only to the U.S. and almost four times the traffic of the next-highest NOC, the British Olympic Association (19.5 million).

The COB generated 74% of its engagements through Instagram.

~ Rich Perelman

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