Meta has published a new report, in conjunction with National Research Group, which looks at how Meta’s platforms help support sporting engagement, and drive sports fandom through communities, evolving digital experiences, and more.
Which also presents significant opportunities for sports-related advertisers, and Meta’s report also explores this aspect, in how marketers can tap into sports communities to boost brand awareness and sales.
First off, the report looks at overall sports engagement, and the role that Meta’s apps play within the broader scope of sports-related discussion.
As you can see from this overview, Meta platforms are a key destination for sports engagement, which makes sense when you consider the overall audience of both Instagram and Facebook, with WhatsApp, Messenger, and now Threads all also playing a part.
In that sense, this does seem like a somewhat unfair comparison, in that Meta’s listing “Meta platforms,” a cumulative grouping of its apps, and pitting that against TikTok and X. But then again, YouTube is there too, and even considering this is a combined figure, 17% is still a lot of sports-related discussion across its apps.
And Meta does break it down more specifically in another section of the report:
This relates to fan engagement specifically, not sports discussion overall, but as you can see, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp ranked higher among survey participants in driving sports engagement. Also Threads. Look at Threads in there taking up its own place in the broader sports landscape.
It’s worth noting too, in this context, sports is a key driving force of social media engagement more broadly.
Back in April, as part of an overview of fashion discussion in the app, X shared this graph:
So as you can see, despite sports engagement on X only accounting for 3% of overall sports discussion, it’s the biggest single topic of focus in the app. That provides some additional insight to color the above charts.
The report also looks at how Facebook and Instagram drive discovery of sports products:
And provides demographic insights for the Meta sports audience:
There’s also an overview of the types of sports content that fans are looking to engage with:
There are also notes on when sports fans are more likely to engage in Meta apps (before, during, and after live events), how sports influencers drive action, as well as platform-by-platform breakdowns of the respective sports audience.
There’s a heap more insight in the full report, which is a must-read for any marketer working in sports or sport-related fields.
