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“Social Series”: Who wins the basketball championship on Instagram?

The investigation by EIS and Virality on the social value of Italian sportsmen is completed with the third and final research dedicated to basketball players and men’s and women’s Serie A clubs.

After registering various confirmations and as many surprises among footballers and volleyball players, this third research dedicated to basketball players and their respective clubs completes the investigation entitled “Social Series” on the relationship between the most practiced sports by Italians and Instagram. The research cycle was conducted by the sports management agency EIS through the digital intelligence platform Virality.

Analyzing the world of the ball in segments, the first fact that emerges clearly is the big difference between the male protagonists, whether they are players or clubs, and the female ones. Without prejudice to the logic that we have adopted to select the accounts to be monitored (see the methodological note at the end), the male profiles are almost double that of the female ones: on the one hand, many female players have private accounts, or even none they have opened none, on the other hand some women’s teams and rely on the corresponding profile of the men’s teams. This happens, for example, for Umana Reyer Venezia and Dinamo Sassari, currently third and fourth force in the women’s A1 championship.

Furthermore, 50% of female players have a fan base of less than 5,000 followers, while less than 30% of male players are below this threshold. This leads to an almost automatic exclusion of these profiles from influencer marketing campaigns developed by brands due to insufficient reach.

Even the three leagues that oversee the two top leagues have a stark difference: the LBA boasts 140,000 followers, while the Women’s Basketball League has only 18,000.

Analyzing the phenomenon from a qualitative point of view, however, we discover a greater homogeneity between the targets. Both basketball players and basketball players have an engagement rate, i.e. the ratio between the number of followers and interactions with content, which is close to 12%. The most engaging profiles are, respectively, that of Matteo Spagnolo of Dolomiti Energia Trentino (22.89%) and Ilaria Panzera of Allianz Geas Sesto S. Giovanni (19.45%).

Homogeneity also on the target, both for gender, predominantly male for both clusters with the exception of the fan-base of David Moss of Germani Brescia; both in terms of age, mainly 18 – 24, the so-called Generation Z. As has already emerged in the soccer and volleyball research, the Clubs and Leagues instead communicate to an on average more adult target, the 25 – 34 year olds, the so-called Millennials.

Also in the two previous searches we learned about the Virality Score, the weighted average of the different values ​​that allows you to draw up a quality ranking. In this way we discover that LBA players, with 51.87 average points, have Instagram profiles that perform better than those of women (46.94). The palm of best is held by Emanuele Vitali of Una Hotels Reggio Emilia with 69 points for men and by Howard Ryhne of Famila Wüber Schio with 63 points for women.

“After studying the social phenomenon of the three most practiced sports in Italy, we can venture a more general and systemic analysis – comments Enrico Gelfi, founder of EIS – In all three sports examined we have seen how there is a clear generational difference between those who follow the players and those who follow the clubs. If three clues prove it (football, volleyball and basketball), we are faced with a polarization of Italian fans based on the quality of the social offer: on the one hand aging of the fans of the single teams (and of sport in general), on the other a lesser interest of the younger ones in the “shirt”, in favor of the personal stories of single champions and female champions”.

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