The Olympic Games signifies history, politics, the economy and most importantly, sport. Every four years the Olympics brings together athletes from over 200 countries to compete in 28 sporting disciplines. It has remained as a constant unification of countries despite world wars, racial divides and economic downfalls. Inclusion breeds participation, which is why The Olympics are a vital advertisement to sports National Governing Bodies (NGBs), who are partially funded based on providing that participation levels are growing.
In the millennial age where technology, the internet and the rise of social media has quickly embedded itself into our everyday life; social video has become an established path to engaging a younger audience. With this in mind, Team Burst Insights decided to analyse over 50 active national NGB profiles to see which countries have been participating the most on popular short social video channels and generating the most participation engagement.
Team USA leads the field by some distance, followed by its border neighbours, Team Canada. The popularity of social media across the Atlantic makes this the one-two finish we expected to see.
The leaderboard shows that Team GB is currently in the Bronze medal position, by virtue of it competing across all three ‘platform events’. Team Italy would have finished in the engagement medal positions, had it decided to compete on Vine to reach its active millennial audience. Its frequent Instagram and Twitter video posting made up for the loss of the Vine platform points and pushed them into 4th place overall.
It’s interesting to find that Team Brasil has earned a significantly higher Instagram score than Twitter, thus pursuing a less traditional instagram-first video approach towards engaging followers.
A natural assumption is that the nations that regularly top the Olympic medal charts, are the most popular on social media, with the most marketing resource. This isn’t always the case.
It was no surprise to find Team USA — who have won a remarkable 121 medals at Rio 2016 (18 more than London 2012) — be the most active short social video country, having posted 2,425 videos across Instagram, Twitter and Vine to date. However, it was a shock to see Italy and the Netherlands join them on the podium.
Team Italy’s Silver place in our findings, posting 2,314 short social videos, came as a result of a steady flow of video posts outside of the Olympic Games. In fact, heading into the Games, they had posted more short social video content than Team USA. The 28 medals won in Rio mirrored their success in the previous London 2012 Olympic games, with their consistency in social content marketing potentially leading to a participation boost and more Olympic success in the future.
Team Netherlands have accomplished an impressive tally of 1,357 short social videos, which compares favourably with the 19 medals and 11th placed finish during the latest Games.
The 2016 Olympic Games have been a roaring success for Team GB, gaining 67 podium finishes and ranking 2nd on the medal board. However, in the short social video stakes, their total of 529 video posts left them in 7th place. During the Games, Team GB posted 175 videos to Instagram, Twitter and Vine.
Twitter retains its mantle as the short social video platform of choice to share video content throughout the Olympic Games. Team USA, Team Italy and Team Netherlands earned their podium positions by virtue of also posting the most Twitter video content. The figures clearly show a large disparity between the two front runners and the rest of the chasing pack.
Team GB — which has 820k Twitter followers, almost exactly half of Team USA — was only able to finished in 8th place for most Twitter videos. Having posted their first video on Twitter in January this year, they reached a peak of sharing 50 videos in the space of 10 days during the Games. A strong finish then from Team GB, with the potential to gain more participation engagement and social media resource that could lead them to compete with Team USA at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Instagram delivers some glory for the host nation, with Team Brasil securing a top three spot, gaining a Bronze with 467 videos. Brazil has posted six times as many Instagram videos as it has on Twitter, reflecting the general popularity of Instagram in South American countries. Team Italy won Gold with 770 video post points, choosing to create a lot of image GIF series to make up for the lack of available video footage, whilst the Team Netherlands accomplished Silver with 504 video uploads.
Team GB wasn’t at the Instagram races before the Games. Despite posting 54 videos during Rio 2016, its relatively small total of 134 video points, held Team GB back in 9th place, behind Team Jamaica, boosted by the brilliance of Usain Bolt, in 8th.
Vine burst onto the social video scene shortly after the 2012 London Games. However, it hasn’t been able to turn its early promise into superstar status for many Olympic NGBs. This goes against the trend of major sports clubs, who see and tap into the appeal of Vine’s six second looped videos with millennials.
Team GB has gained a Bronze medal by a 57 Vine video tally, posting vines on a weekly basis in the build up and throughout the tournament. Given vines popularity across the pond, it’s unsurprising to see Team Canada won Silver through a score of 76 vines and Team USA gained a Gold for 92. With only ten of the 50 countries having posted a Vine video, it definitely had the weakest field, which is a participation opportunity missed for some nations.
CLOSING CEREMONY CONCLUSION
After the Olympic torch has been extinguished for another four years, talk quickly turns to Olympic legacies. Social video can become a force to drive mass participation but our research suggests that Sporting NGBs will need to change their training routines and remain actively engaged with fans when Olympic sports are not in the spotlight. This can be achieved through continued access to Olympic star assets and reposting the enthralling short social video content generated at these Games.
So which country won the short social video content contest? It would be easy to say Team USA, who generated the most engagement and posted nearly 1,000 videos during the Games. You could go for the underdogs in Team Italy and Team Netherlands, or even Team Brasil for dancing to a different Instagram beat. But if the goal is increased participation then a special mention must go to Team GB and its social video network of brand supporters.
During the Rio 2016 Games, we analysed 1,200 short social video post mentions of @TeamGB on Twitter from the National Lottery, individual sport NGBs, media outlets, kit providers adidas, technology brands, retailers, betting companies and some good sportsmanship from competing nations.
Now it’s up to Team GB to keep us engaged until the spotlight shines on Tokyo 2020.
