Sean Walsh
Sean is a Director at Intelligency heading up our digital marketing and client services operations. Sean has 15+ years experiencing working both in-house and agency with brands including Lloyds, Alstom, Hitachi, Lufthansa, Viaplay, DFDS Seaways and Mercedes-Benz.
How does Twitter growth in the Aviva Premiership compare to Ireland, Wales & Scotland?
It’s been an eventful year for Rugby Union across the UK and Ireland, with a Grand Slam triumph for the Irish in March followed by Leinster collecting the double with the Pro14 title and the European Champions Cup. Indeed, the Celtic teams did extremely well with Munster & Scarlets also making the Semi-Finals of Europe’s top competition. Over in England, Saracens claimed the Aviva Premiership at Twickenham whilst Newcastle Falcons had a fantastic season and qualified for the Champion Cup.
Therefore, with the Rugby season officially over, our analysts wanted to explore just how fans connected with club rugby in the British Isle between January and June and how adequately the clubs leveraged their social media following to generate strong growth. In this blog, we will be looking at comparing the performance of the clubs in England, Ireland, Wales & Scotland to see who had the greatest growth and the key takeaways.
Which clubs have the biggest following?
Below are the top three clubs in each division as of our most recent Social Ranking update and as you can see the Irish teams lead the way in terms of fan following on Twitter, quite considerably.
| Club | June 2018 |
| Leinster | 255,000 |
| Munster | 231,000 |
| Ulster | 139,000 |
| Leicester | 143,000 |
| Gloucester | 119,000 |
| Northampton | 113,000 |
Upon comparing the top three teams in each division, there’s immediately some noticeable discrepancies in following. Firstly, in the Pro14, the Irish teams are most well followed with Leinster having more than Gloucester & Northampton combined. This is fairly surprising considering all six of these clubs joined the social network in the same year 2009 and since then Northampton & Leicester have seen great success in winning titles domestically. Additionally, last year’s European champions Saracens don’t even make the top 6 in the British Isle (they sit 9th). This is curious, considering that on average English rugby teams achieve higher average attendances than their Irish rivals with Leicester having 23k over 2017-18 season versus Leinster’s 14k. Moreover, with @EnglandRugby having more Twitter followers than @IrishRugby, one could argue that the Aviva clubs aren’t as successful in engaging and acquiring followers.
How does the growth rate for clubs in British Isle compare?
Upon comparing the growth rates it became clear that Celtic clubs in the Pro14 league was considerably higher than their English rivals. Pro14 had an average growth rate over since January of 1.02% with Scarlets growing at the most with 1.63%, which is was a result of the club implementing a savvy social media strategy to take advantage of their European run. Meanwhile, the Aviva Premiership clubs grew on average by 0.76%, with the Falcons growing the most by 1.55%.
That being said, both leagues share similar patterns across the last six months with higher growth rates occurring earlier in the year with drop off towards the season’s close. On May 25th, Twitter also deactivated some accounts which they believe were set up by under age users and this has also had an impact on overall growth in 2018, with clubs such as Leinster & Leicester seeing negative growth of -0.15% & -0.03% respectively in May.
Furthermore, fiacuity has combined the results from both leagues to calculate an overall ‘British Isle Club Benchmark’ which is 0.88%. Only 9 teams from the two divisions were higher than the benchmark, with SIX in the Pro 14 and THREE in the Aviva Premiership.
This would make sense considering the higher growth rate in Ireland & Wales in particular however it also paints a picture that the Celtic clubs are using more innovative methods to garner fans. Let’s take Ulster for example, who have added nearly 5k followers since January despite a season without silverware, whilst Saracens have only managed 2k, even with a league title.
What are the Key Takeaways?
London Irish saw the lowest growth since January, coming in below the benchmark on both the Aviva Premiership Average as well as the combined B.I average.
Gloucester saw the biggest growth rate of the top six clubs in the two divisions with a rate of 1.36%. This saw them cut Leicester’s follower lead by nearly 4,000.
Irish clubs dominate the overall Twitter followers, with Leinster & Munster exceeding 200k, whilst on field results have seen Newcastle & Scarlets grow well above the British Isle average benchmark.
Rugby’s growth rate in the British Isle for clubs is much lower when compared to the top two divisions for football, with the Championship having a growth rate of 1.15% and the English Premier League having 1.74%. Perhaps most interestingly for Rugby Union is that the Super League has seen an average growth of 0.93% in the last six months.
Twitter policy changes contributed to some negative growth however most clubs should expect a decrease in the post season however those with the higher rates were often interested in how their players were performing whilst on Summer Tours and therefore maintaining relevancy.
So how do rugby clubs improve their Twitter growth? How do they beat the benchmark?
The fiacuity platform specialises in analysing a brand’s digital footprint to help identify threats, ROI and opportunities.
Get in touch with us to find out more about how fiacuity can help your club whether that be through providing strategic recommendations to improve growth rates as well as learning what your rivals are doing to achieve higher growth rates. Our platform can help you review your entire season’s digital marketing activity (social, email, content, paid advertising) and help you make smarter decisions on where to allocate more time and investment.
