The sports world came alive on social media to celebrate the retirement of Kobe Bryant earlier this month. As one would expect, this garnered enormous social media buzz for the Laker superstar and his sponsor, Nike. #MambaDay was the hashtag used to capture the closing of a successful NBA career and it generated huge impressions.
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During the week of April 7 – April 15, 652 of the entities paying tribute to Kobe on social media were athletes and teams. They posted a total of 1,174 times to social media, generating almost 1.13 billion total impressions.
The injury-riddled star. The Mamba Mentor. The man who scored 60.
Take a look back at #KB20https://t.co/s1mUU4AMBT pic.twitter.com/PXUR2cwTbL
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) April 18, 2016
Of these posts by athletes and teams, the bulk of the content was posted to Twitter with 724 posts made generating more than 109 million total impressions. 289 Instagram posts by athletes and teams generated 527million total impressions, and 161 Facebook posts accounted for 488 million impressions.
28 Nike Basketball ambassadors combined to post 58 times to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, generating more than 333 million total impressions to social media. It should be no surprise that fellow Nike athlete Lebron James lead the pack with more than 182.6 million total impressions spread across his 4 total posts to social media.
Top Leagues (athlete and team social accounts) posting for #MambaDay
- NBA – 293 posts for 620 million impressions
- La Liga – 17 posts for 170.6 million impressions
- NFL – 470 posts for 86 million impressions
- Men’s Tennis – 13 posts for 57 million impressions
- MLB – 89 posts for 53 million impressions
Top Athletes/Teams Posting for MambaDay
- LeBron James – 4 total posts for 182.6 million impressions
- FC Barcelona – 11 total posts, 150.7 million impressions
- Rafael Nadal – 4 total posts, 36 million impressions
- Kevin Durant – 3 total posts, 35.4 million impressions
- Chris Paul – 2 total posts, 32.3 million impressions
In Kobe’s last game, we’re reminded to always love the hate. #Mambaday https://t.co/MujYKIv6Ja
— Nike (@Nike) April 13, 2016
All social stats gathered for the making of this article are courtesy of MVP Index.