Social media has increasingly become a vital part of the toolbox utilised by international federations when it comes to growing their sport. Now, there is an indication of which federations play the social media game better than others.
Redtorch, a research and ad agency based in London, has compiled a list of the top-40 international sports federations based on social media. For a full breakdown of their report and methodology, click here.
All things considered, World Triathlon has performed well in the rankings. It was the highest climber of any federation from 2021 to 2022. Having ranked 36th in the list two years ago, last year World Triathlon moved up 10 places to 26th.
One significant point to highlight was that no other federation made a gain of more than 7 places.
According to Redtorch, World Triathlon’s growth was inspired in large part due to fan growth and video views captured by a wider audience. It’s climb through the list suggests a wider growth of the sport in the public mind. Triathlon is certainly one of the youngest sports in the top-40 and should have plenty of space to continue on its upward trajectory.
The top spot in the rankings was occupied by Volleyball World; they were followed by FIFA and World Athletics.
Looking at the wider trends of international federations, Instagram was the most popular source of content. Over the course of last year, international federations added a total of 19.6 million followers on Instagram. Facebook was next with 15.9 million new followers.
YouTube and Twitter then followed with growths of 10.6 million and 5.9 million followers, respectively.
All represented a big spike from 2021 (of 68% in total). Indeed, Redtorch noted that since 2016 international federations have added 228.1 million followers.
In addition international federations generated 9.1 billion online video views, of which 42% (or 4.1 billion) came from TikTok.
Amid the wider landscape of social media, then, World Triathlon appear to have grown quite adept at the game.
Nor, for that matter, is success on social media, confined to the federation. Elite triathletes have also used it to broadcast their image and the sport. One particular highlight on that front was the work of Claire Michel and Yuko Takahashi prior to WTCS Yokohama.
