Chicago Cubs score big in social media series, too
After breaking their 108-year drought and winning the World Series, the Cubs are at the top of their social media game, as well. Their social media interactions (likes, comments and shares) increased by 387.3 percent, reports HookIt, a digital platform that measures and values sponsorship opportunities for athletes and teams.
The Cubs drove 118 million social media interactions between Oct. 25 and Nov. 3, which HookIt CEO Scott Tilton said roughly translates to $35 million to $53 million worth of marketing and audience reach for the team’s sponsors, or $23,798 to $35,697 per post.
The Cubs trounced the competition in terms of social media interactions; HookIt pegged the Los Angeles Dodgers, which had 27.4 million social interactions, at a distant second place, and the Cleveland Indians, with 25.0 million, at third place.
The Chicago team’s social media boost has also had a positive impact on individual players, who benefited from a 22.5 percent increase in followers on their accounts, or 2.3 million new followers. That can mean big money for players. Third baseman Kris Bryant promotes Red Bull on social media, and HookIt currently values each of those posts at an impressive $245,400.
What can the Cubs do with their newfound social media growth? “Leverage it to incorporate sponsors into content being posted and shared [on social; media],” Tilton said. “The social and digital world can be bigger than broadcast.”
He pointed to the Dodgers as an example of a team with an impressive sponsored social media strategy. “They did an amazing job for Budweiser,” he said, citing social media posts that emphasized the winning game scores as particularly popular with fans. “When they made a post they had a really cool image of a player or the team with the game score when they won and those posts outperformed any other posts they did by a factor of four or five to one and all of those posts had a Budweiser watermark on them.”
