Irish Sport published 13,919 pieces of content across Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok in August, but the month produced two very different stories: declining activity and engagement on the more established platforms, and a welcome rebound on TikTok.

The NIFL completed an unusual clean sweep of the activity rankings, publishing more content than any other organisation on all four channels.

The bigger performance story, though, belonged to Athletics Ireland, which led the engagement-per-1,000-followers rankings on Facebook, Instagram and X, while its European Championships content produced the leading posts on X and Instagram and the month’s biggest TikTok video.

The wider comparison with previous August reports is also revealing. August 2026 produced almost exactly the same level of overall public engagement as August 2025, around 3.2 million interactions across the four channels, despite a very different distribution of those engagements.

The exceptional Paris Olympic and Paralympic summer of 2024 remains another world altogether, with close to six million engagements from Facebook, Instagram and X alone before TikTok’s near 800,000 interactions were added.

The Irish Sport Social Media Report is produced for Sport for Business by our partners Olytico and is based on publicly available data. It does not include analysis of paid or promoted content.

X – Athletics Ireland Rises as Overall Engagement Keeps Falling

 

 

Activity on X dropped two per cent month-on-month to 4,430 posts, but engagement fell much more sharply, down 36 per cent to just 83,650.

The NIFL led activity with 755 posts, narrowly ahead of the League of Ireland on 751, with Dublin GAA third on 307. Athletics Ireland published 234 times but had a much bigger impact per post.

It topped average engagement per post at 112, ahead of Ireland Football on 96 and Irish Rugby on 58. More significantly, when audience size is taken into account, Athletics Ireland delivered 512 engagements per 1,000 followers, ahead of the FAI on 190, League of Ireland on 172 and Shamrock Rovers on 156.

The account also produced the month’s leading X post, celebrating Rhasidat Adeleke and Mark English winning medals at the European Championships in Birmingham, generating more than 1,300 public engagements.

It reflects a very different X landscape than just a few years ago.

In August 2025, 5,491 posts generated 143,580 engagements, meaning that this year’s activity is down 19 per cent but engagement has fallen by around 42 per cent year-on-year. Shamrock Rovers led the engagement-per-1,000-followers ranking last year on 505, meaning Athletics Ireland’s 512 actually edges the 2025 benchmark despite the much smaller overall engagement pool.

The Olympic comparison is starker again. August 2024 generated 556,500 engagements from 5,792 posts, with Team Ireland averaging 847 engagements per post and generating 3,643 engagements per 1,000 followers.

Going back to August 2023, X still generated more than 420,000 engagements from 5,200 posts, with Irish Rugby averaging 765 engagements per post.

The trend over that period is difficult to ignore. Individual pieces of sporting content can still cut through strongly, but the overall volume of public interaction available to Irish sporting organisations on X is substantially smaller.

 

 


 

Facebook – Cricket Leads as Engagement Recovers Year-on-Year

 

Facebook also contracted month-on-month, with activity falling ten per cent to 4,755 posts and public engagements dropping 35 per cent to 748,981.

However, the story is much more positive when August is compared with 2025.

Last year, 4,384 posts generated only 507,002 engagements. This year’s output is therefore up around eight per cent while engagement has increased by almost 48 per cent year-on-year.

The NIFL topped activity with 746 posts, followed by the League of Ireland on 598 and Athletics Ireland on 309.

Cricket Ireland comfortably led average engagement per post at 1,615, ahead of Team Ireland at 408, the FAI at 308, Irish Rugby at 293 and Horse Racing Ireland at 286.

Cricket also supplied the platform’s leading individual content for the second month running. A spectacular Rashid Khan catch generated more than 40,000 public engagements.

Athletics Ireland’s strength appears when follower numbers are factored in. Its 809 engagements per 1,000 followers led the platform, ahead of the NIFL on 687, Boxing Ireland on 622, Rowing Ireland on 581 and Swim Ireland on 575.

The longer comparison shows Facebook remains well below its Paris-driven peak. August 2024 delivered 1,038,556 engagements from only 3,736 posts. Team Ireland averaged 1,461 engagements per post, while Paralympics Ireland generated an extraordinary 3,680 engagements per 1,000 followers.

August 2023 also generated more than one million Facebook engagements from just 3,241 posts, with Irish Rugby averaging 5,775 engagements per post.

So while Facebook remains below those exceptional levels, 2026’s rebound from 2025 is still a positive. It reinforces the platform’s ongoing value for sporting organisations that can identify content with broad appeal beyond their core follower base.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

Instagram – Still the Engagement Engine, But Back to 2025 Levels

 

Instagram suffered the sharpest month-on-month decline, with activity down five per cent to 4,091 posts and engagement falling 51 per cent from July.

Given July’s 3.904 million engagements, that puts August at 1.91 million — effectively identical to the 1.92 million recorded in August 2025.

The longer-term comparison is fascinating.

August Instagram engagement stood at 4.1 million in 2024 and 3.9 million in 2023, compared with 1.82 million in 2022 and around 1.9 million in each of the past two years.

Activity, however, continues to grow. There were 4,091 posts this August, compared with 3,844 in 2025, 3,086 during the Olympic summer of 2024, and just over 2,000 in August 2023.

Again, more publishing is not automatically producing more public engagement.

The NIFL led activity with 732 posts, ahead of the League of Ireland on 657 and Athletics Ireland on 303.

The GAA remained number one for average engagement per post at 5,280, despite a 35 per cent month-on-month fall, after July’s All-Ireland Hurling and Football Finals. Ireland Football was second on 3,825, with Athletics Ireland third on 1,385 — up 143 per cent from July.

The comparative GAA numbers show remarkable consistency. It averaged 5,455 engagements per post in August 2025 and 6,044 in August 2022.

But August 2026 ultimately belonged to Athletics Ireland.

Its 5,729 engagements per 1,000 followers comfortably led the rankings, ahead of NIFL on 2,524, Camogie on 2,234, the SSE Airtricity Women’s Premier Division on 2,227 and Boxing Ireland on 1,981.

That Athletics Ireland figure is also 58 per cent higher than the 3,625 with which the League of Ireland topped the equivalent ranking in August 2025. The benchmark from Olympic August 2024 remains higher, however, when Team Ireland delivered 10,124 engagements per 1,000 followers.

Athletics Ireland also supplied the month’s biggest Instagram post, with footage of the Irish support behind Rhasidat Adeleke in Birmingham, passing 20,000 public engagements.

That combination of elite performance, personality and supporters enjoying the moment was a recurring theme across the month’s strongest content.

 

 

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TikTok – The Only Platform Moving in the Right Direction Month-on-Month

 

 

Sport for Business member organisations published 643 TikToks, only one per cent fewer than July, but engagement rose 18 per cent to 474,431, and views increased 11 per cent to 6.4 million.

The NIFL’s 170 posts represented a remarkable level of activity and completed its four-platform sweep. The League of Ireland followed with 67, Volleyball Ireland produced 47, Athletics Ireland 43 and Munster Rugby 41.

Ireland Football led average engagement per post by a wide margin at 7,278, followed by Athletics Ireland on 2,571 and the BKT United Rugby Championship on 2,140. Horse Racing Ireland averaged 1,359, with Ulster Rugby on 1,144.

Here the year-on-year trend is less encouraging.

August 2025 generated 624,402 engagements and 9.9 million views from only 465 TikToks. This year organisations have posted 38 per cent more content, but engagement is down around 24 per cent and views have fallen by roughly 35 per cent.

August 2024 was stronger still: 317 TikToks generated 797,199 engagements and 9.84 million views, helped enormously by Horse Racing Ireland’s viral video comparing the size of a horse’s heart with a human heart.

Even August 2023, with just 258 posts, produced 499,516 engagements and 7.17 million views.

That gives us an interesting four-year progression in publishing volume: 258 posts in 2023, 317 in 2024, 465 in 2025 and 643 in 2026. Content output has increased by almost 150 per cent, but views have not risen with it.

August still produced a genuine TikTok success story, though.

Athletics Ireland was the only organisation to pass one million views, generating 1.44 million from its 43 posts. A video featuring members of Team Ireland attracted more than 400,000 views and close to 40,000 engagements, completing Athletics Ireland’s remarkable month across the platforms.

 

@athleticsireland The only place we are going is BIRMINGHAM 😎 The Irish team is Birmingham bound and ready for H̶o̶l̶i̶d̶a̶y̶ The European Championships! 🔜 #irishathletics ♬ original sound – Athletics Ireland


 

The Sport for Business Perspective

The August numbers offer two particularly useful lessons.

The first is the value of quality relative to audience size. Athletics Ireland did not publish the most content on any of the four channels. Yet it led engagement per 1,000 followers on X, Facebook and Instagram and supplied leading content on three platforms. That is a powerful measure of how effectively sporting success translated into digital attention.

Second, continued growth in content volume is not being matched by equivalent growth in consumption. This is clearest on TikTok, where publishing has risen from 258 videos in August 2023 to 643 this year, and on Instagram, where August output has almost doubled over the same period.

Every organisation is competing against an almost limitless volume of content within each user’s feed.

That makes the performances of Athletics Ireland, Cricket Ireland and some of the other month’s standouts particularly instructive. Live sporting success remains a tremendous asset, but speed, emotion, personality and an understanding of how a moment works on each individual platform are becoming every bit as important as the size of the audience already following you.

The Irish Sport Social Media Report is produced by Sport for Business in partnership with Olytico and is based on publicly available data. It does not include analysis of paid or promoted content.

 

 

 

 

Olytico and all of the sporting bodies featured in this analysis are full members of Sport for Business.

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