Welcome to the Irish Sport Social Media Report for January 2018. January is a quiet month for sport, as the country comes down from the highs of content and activity evident in December.

Nevertheless, the demand for content never stops, even during January, officially the most depressing month in the calendar.

In this report for Sport for Business, Sportego looks at how active our Irish Sporting organisations were during the month, the social platforms used and the engagement achieved.

The total Irish sport social following across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter is now 4.26m, up from 4.23m in November, representing a 0.71% increase.

In terms of output, Basketball Ireland again are top with 1180 posts across the three social channels.  This is a major month for the sport with last weekend’s National Cup Finals taking centre stage.

Twitter dominates their output in January, with almost 77% of their efforts going on that platform.

Cricket Ireland were second, with their 873 posts representing a 232% increase in output. The Cricketers had a busy month, with the women’s team travelling to Zimbabwe for a series of one-day and T20 contests, and also their boys competing in the U-19 Cricket World Cup.

Irish Rugby were tops in January for Cross Channel Engagement with a 210k total, as they built up steam ahead of the Nat West Six Nations Championship which kicked off this weekend.

Engagement increased for most bodies in January, following what was a quieter December, with Triathlon Ireland the biggest movers among the smaller bodies… up by 656% to start the new year.

In the month of January, the Irish sporting bodies created an average of 7.07 social posts per day, with more than 65% of communications via Twitter.

That is a trend which doesn’t appear to be changing, despite the far lower engagement levels generated when compared to Facebook and particularly Instagram.

Instagram usage was up to .37 posts per day from December’s figures, but still much lower than you would hope. As you can see by the 2% engagement rate, it is worth taking the time to put suitable content on the platform. Rugby Ireland posted 14.7% of their content on Insta, which has been key to their increased engagement.

In December we had 6 Irish organisations achieving more than a million potential eyeballs on Twitter, with Rugby Ireland dominating with a potential reach of 64.7m. Cricket Ireland had another great month in terms of social media exposure, capitalising on their own growing following, as well as participation in international competition.


As you can see in this graphic, four of the top eight mentions in January went to @IrelandCricket, including five tags from the 7.66m strong ICC twitter account.

International competition, and the promotion by governing bodies is clearly a massive advantage with growing followings, and increasing engagement.

This report and insight was produced exclusively for Sport for Business by Sportego. They work with sporting organisations to gain insights from their social media presence and also their data. Check them out at Sportego.ie or get in touch @WeAreSportego on Twitter.

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