In the November Irish Sport social reach report, produced for Sport for Business members by Sportego, we look at a number of additional sports including Horse Racing Ireland and those bubbling just under the ‘Big 4’
Our reach increases this month as we include a number of additional Irish sporting associations. This has followed on from positive comments received about the first three reports.
Going forward the report will now monitor the Irish Amateur Boxing Association, Paralympic Ireland, Horse Racing Ireland, Irish Sailing, Irish Hockey, Basketball Ireland and Cycling Ireland.
The collective social reach of the newly added bodies comes to almost 130,000 between Twitter and Facebook, with Paralympic Ireland and Horse Racing Ireland leading the way with over 26,000 of a social reach for both.
It is worth noting that Horse Racing Ireland have over 7.5 times followers on Twitter compared to Facebook and has the potential to grow this further as we move into another National Hunt season with Irish horses and stables performing strongly on international stages.
The big news this month comes from Irish Rugby with the combined reach of the IRFU, the four provinces and the Ulster Bank league breaking the 1 million mark for the first time.
While the month to month growth was 2%, down from last months World Cup driven 3.3%, the growth since July has been over 11%, 3% more than that of the GAA.
While the social reach of Irish Rugby is immense, it’s four month growth is still less than soccer and cricket though they are coming off a smaller base.
The FAI and league of Ireland have grown 11% since July and will look forward to another spike once the draw is made for the Euro 2016 Championships on December 12th.
Qualification being secured in November saw 6.33% growth in followers on the official FAI twitter account, with the Facebook account breaking the 150k mark.
The social landscape has changed dramatically since the last major finals appearance of an Irish team in 2012 and this is likely to be the biggest growth area in 2016.
Cricket Ireland can confidently say they are Ireland’s fastest growing sport on and off the field with nearly 20% in growth in social reach since July.
On the GAA front despite the ongoing club championship, it was a quiet month although there was some milestones achieved with Donegal GAA and Down GAA breaking the 30k and 20k twitter followers mark respectively.
The Munster Football and Leinster Hurling Club finals yesterday both gave rise to upsets and the combined twitter following of winners Oulart the Ballabh and Clonal Commercials is 3,800 as opposed to 5,500 combined between Nemo Rangers and Cuala.
Leinster GAA meanwhile also broke through the 20,000 milestone on twitter whilst also reaching their 5000th like on Facebook, a feat matched by Cavan GAA.
This research and report is produced by Sportego.ie, the fan engagement company. If you would like to know more about the figures and numbers included here or indeed, more about us, get in touch with Trev@sportego.ie
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