LaLiga Rules in Europe

It’s the start of June; the weather is getting warmer; the World Cup is only 10 days away. And, we’re saying goodbye to the 2017-2018 soccer season in Europe. At Blinkfire we decided to analyze the last few months of competition as it relates to social media for LaLiga, Premier League, and Bundesliga.

The Spanish LaLiga was the European league with the best social numbers. They received more than 500 million engagements during the past season, while the English Premier League earned 392 million and Bundesliga earned 100 million.

Unstoppable growth

LaLiga had more than one million new followers each month, with 3.4 million in December, their best month of the season. If we focus on the numbers generated by players, the figures are astronomical. The stars from LaLiga earned 3.5 billion engagements since the beginning of the season. To understand this number, that’s more than all engagements earned by all Premier League players (1.4 billion), all Ligue 1 Conforama players (1.1 billion), and all Bundesliga players (475 million).

The other champions

FC Barcelona won their 25th LaLiga trophy, but social media saw other winners. One of them was CD Leganés. Their exceptional season on the pitch parlayed to their social media channels. The Madrid team increased their social followers by 77%.

Another similar case was Levante UD. The ‘granota’ team had a marvelous second half of the season that saw them stay in the top division. Their good results coupled with strong social media content saw their Instagram followers grow by 171%.

Girona FC was another team that revolutionized LaLiga this season. The 2017-2018 season was their first year in the top category, and they not only managed to avoid relegation, but also fought for a Europa League position until the end. In April the Catalan team earned 12 out of 15 possible points, and their winning ways helped them receive more than 600,000 engagements during that month.

Real Betis and their late season surge broke up the fifth and sixth place positions where Sevilla and Villarreal sat for over 20 weeks. The team gained more than 640,000 new social followers and earned 45.6 million engagements.

Instagram skyrockets

If there’s one social platform that’s knocked all others out of the water, it would be Instagram. The data generated by LaLiga teams and the championship match on Instagram was overwhelming. For example, LaLiga’s official Instagram account grew by 96%, adding more than 3.5 million followers — who are probably counting down the days until the start of the 2018-2019 season!