Football is big business and last weekend saw the most expensive football transfer take place with Neymar da Silva Santos Junior making history- causing massive ripples in social media, according to new research.
Paris Saint-Germain’s record signing of the Brazilian striker for 222 million euros stunned seasoned analysts and fans on social media alike. The move from Barcelona to the French club will also see the 25-year-old pocket $34m after taxes, making him the highest paid footballer in the world.
Socialbakers dug a little deeper to identify the impact of the news on fan engagement on social media, and how brands are taking advantage of this increased communication with fans:
Facebook posts (on the club’s page) announcing the transfer gets 8x more interactions than other posts on the same page. The clubs twitter post reached a notable 30x interactions more than other posts.
The post announcing Neymar’s transfer was the most popular post among all transfer related posts, both on Facebook and Twitter. The announcement gained almost 400k interactions on FB and 308k on Twitter. A video following the announcement on Facebook has achieved a huge number of views – 618k so far.
Socialbakers has seen a similar reaction on Facebook and Twitter around the announcement of the second most expensive transfer: Manchester Utd’s announcement that Paul Pogba is joining their team for 105 million EUR.
So, it turns out that the more expensive football transfers get the most engagement on social, with brands like Adidas and Beats by Dr. Dre capitalising on the news and creating the most relevant brand content to engage fans.
Source: www.socialbakers.com
