With Wimbledon just around the corner, this year’s tennis tournament is set to be the biggest yet on social media, dominating the 2015 Grand Slam calendar so far in the social space. New research looks at more than 5m social mentions across blogs, Facebook, Google+, Reddit, Twitter and other social sites to uncover key trends for marketers looking to reach this lucrative audience.
The latest Adobe Digital Index found that social buzz around Wimbledon was up 30 percent compared to 2014.
By analysing the social profiles of the world’s top-ranked tennis players, Adobe also created a list of the Top 10 Most Marketable Tennis athletes with reigning champion Djokovic topping the list.
Other findings include:
• The championships are the most talked-about event of the tennis year so far, averaging 1.5 times as many daily mentions as the French Open at the end of May and 3.5 times as many as January’s Australian Open
• The UK is the country generating the most social buzz around Wimbledon, with Andy Murray accounting for a third of Wimbledon buzz
• The other four countries most enthusiastic about Wimbledon are the US, France, Spain, and Australia, with the US buzz dominated by Serena Williams, France backing Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka, Spain supporting Nadal, and the Australians favouring Murray
ADI looked at more than 5m social mentions across blogs, Facebook, Google+, Reddit, Twitter, Dailymotion, Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr, VK, Disqus, Foursquare, Metacafe, WordPress and YouTube. (Adobe is CMO.com’s parent company.)
The analysis found that the social buzz around Wimbledon was up 30 percent compared to last year. And the championships are also the most talked-about event of the tennis year so far, averaging 1.5 times as many daily mentions as the French Open at the end of May, and 3.5 times as many as January’s Australian Open.
“An iconic event like Wimbledon always causes a lot of chatter in the social realm,” said ADI Principal Analyst Tamara Gaffney. “Winning in these tournaments can also be a huge boon for the athlete. Both Novak Djokovic and Petra Kvitova–who won last year–have more than three times the buzz they had compared to last year in the run-up to the tournament.”
“Beyond the athletes, the chatter will definitely be around the Royal Family, strawberries and cream, and selfie sticks, which were recently banned,” she added.
Top Ten Most Marketable Players
ADI also analysed the social profiles of the world’s top-ranked tennis players to create a Top 10 Most Socially Marketable Tennis Athletes ranking. Top of the list was reigning Wimbledon champion Djokovic, with Serena Williams in second place, Rafael Nadal third, and Roger Federer in fourth.
The Top 10 Most Socially Marketable Tennis Athletes from Adobe
“Tennis players are embraced around the world, and putting a ranking on how influential they are within social media can show marketers what they should expect for their brand when paying for an endorsement,” Gaffney explained. “We aren’t too far from a world where social clout will be a large reason for hiring one athlete over another to be the face of your business.”
Gaffney also highlighted that four of the Top 10 Most Marketable Tennis Athletes are women.
“Tennis is definitely where we find the most star power for women athletes,” she said.
The ADI algorithm created the Top 10 by combining the number of social mentions the player had in the last 30 days, how many followers they have on Twitter and Instagram, the number of Facebook likes, international reach, positive sentiment, and social fan following.
UK Generates Most Wimbledon Buzz
Unsurprisingly, the UK is the country generating the most social buzz around Wimbledon. It’s also passionate about Andy Murray, who accounts for a third of the Wimbledon buzz from the UK. The other four countries most enthusiastic about Wimbledon are the US, France, Spain, and Australia, with the US buzz dominated by Serena Williams, France backing Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka, Spain supporting Nadal, and the Australians favouring Murray.
ADI’s analysis found that grass court tennis seems to excite fans on social media more than the clay courts of the French Open, with three times the anticipation for grass. Digging deeper, sentiment analysis showed 53% of the buzz around Wimbledon’s grass courts referred to with joy or admiration, compared to only 51% for the clay of Roland Garros.