Leicester City has done the completely improbable and won the Barclay’s Premier League for the first time in club history, despite the reported 5000-1 odds stacked against them at the onset of this season. So with this Cinderella success, how did the club’s social media influence improve over the season? We asked social media measurement and valuation platform MVPindex to find out how the club and their star striker Jamie Vardy have grown their audience and engagement during their championship season.
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Leicester’s biggest social media leap in total fans was on Facebook. Since July 21, 2015 the team’s first preseason game, Leicester’s Facebook page grew by more than 4 million fans from 446,245 to 4,564,520 on May 4th, 2016. The 2011 Census of Leicester reports that the town’s population is 330,000. Their top post on Facebook from the last month celebrated the team’s clinching of a spot in the Champion’s league. Hello Europe, indeed.
Their biggest leap in percentage growth came on Instagram. In the same time period, Leicester’s Instagram follower count grew from 40,710 to 674,412 on May 4 – an increase of 1,557%. The top post in the past month featured manager Claudio Ranieri proudly displaying the Premier League championship banner.
In the same time period, the team’s Twitter account has increased its followers by almost 4x from 174,920 to 688,990 on May 4. The team’s biggest follower increase occurred after defeating Manchester City on February 6th of this year, growing 11% week over week in that time period for a total of 333,776 new followers. Their top post on the platform declared their victory over England:
Leicester City. Champions of England. pic.twitter.com/WRwfysTn2N
— Leicester City (@LCFC) May 2, 2016
Jamie Vardy – Social Striker
On July 21st of last year, Jamie Vardy had 38,812 Twitter followers. A very respectable number. Since then he’s ballooned to 406,446 – a 947% increase over the course of a season. Here’s how his growth compares to other international soccer stars over the same time period:
Vardy – 947%
Ronaldo – 14%
Rooney – 11.5%
Aguero – 11.85%
Sturridge – 18.9%
Vardy’s top post on Twitter trolled Tottenham striker Harry Kane, after a post to his instagram warned Leicester that the Spurs weren’t backing down. Vardy’s tweet won the day:
— Jamie Vardy (@vardy7) May 2, 2016
Vardy is sponsored by Nike, and his three tweets for the brand this year have generated more than $73K in engagement value for the brand.
Vardy joined Instagram 4 weeks ago and currently has 298K followers on the platform, with every photo and video posted receiving north of 30K likes.