The sixth edition of IPL has completed 3 weeks already and no doubt this edition has been one of the most exciting till date. Be it Gayle’s mayhem against Pune or Jadeja’s match winning innings (or should I say ‘Sir Jadeja’). In the first two weeks, we did see Sunrisers and CSK dominating the social thick of things in IPL with Pune having a bad luck (or relatively bad engagement) not only in IPL but on Social Media as well. The third week (17th April – 23rd April 2013) does bring in some interesting facts. We have analyzed the social front of IPL6 with the help of Unmetric.
IPL Teams on Facebook
The combined strength of all the IPL teams stands at close to 10 million fans out of which Mumbai Indians has a lion’s share of more than 30% (3 Million+ Fans on Facebook) followed by CSK and KKR around 19% each. When it comes to the Fan Growth Rate, Sunrisers yet again are way ahead of all the other teams with a fan growth rate (FGR) of 16.3% in week 3 and an average fan growth rate of 23% in this IPL edition on Facebook. Below is the week wise break up of the growth of all the IPL teams on Facebook which illustrates Mumbai is growing at the least rate (might be attributed to double the size of fans they already possess).
We look at engagement in the form of IPM (Interactions per thousand Fans) for week 3 and CSK has cracked the engagement code for this week with amazing amount of traction (380 interactions every 1,000 Fans) mostly due to the IPL franchise capitalizing on the ‘Sir Ravindra Jadeja’ joke which has been trolling the world of Twitter for the past few months. The joke was re-ignited by MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina tweeting Sir Jadeja jokes on their official Twitter handles which was sportingly taken by Jadeja himself. A new way for a brand to capitalize on their player’s popularity and turning the same to increase their engagement levels. Pune Warriors for week 3 was not captured by Unmetric and hence has been skipped for this week’s engagement comparison.
When it comes to responding on Facebook, not all IPL teams are taking the extra efforts of responding to fans and engaging them in conversations (Kings XI are replying to comments related to queries about Shaun Marsh’s return only). And though I can understand agencies are busy posting about live matches/developments on IPL pages and considering the huge volume of comments coming in for each ball played on Facebook, it would be next to impossible to reply to each and every comment and mine them. But then, responding to some of the genuine queries would have been nice and human.
When it comes to Facebook applications, KKR’s KKR Team has seen the highest traction in terms of highest active users followed by RCB’s Join the RCB Club with both the applications drawing more than 1.2K monthly active users.
IPL 6 on Twitter
IPL teams on Twitter have been constantly updated with news and updates and live scores for the ongoing IPL. When it comes to engagement and follower strength, below is the breakdown for Week 3 which concludes that CSK and KKR are leading not only in terms of followers but also the engagement over the past week. Although, even Mumbai Indians is not that far behind with a better engagement score of 35 and more than 171K followers.
On the activity front, more than 66% of the tweets by the IPL franchises were pro-active tweets while only 9% being replies to followers. Most of the tweets were in the period of 6 PM – 12 AM midnight which is understandable with the time slot of night matches in IPL. Kings Xi Punjab have been the most active team on Twitter responding to most of the tweets (97 replies) by their fans within a span on 15 minutes or less which is commendable, The average response time for KXIP has been less than 4 minutes. And when you take the overall tenure of 3 weeks of IPL, still Kings XI has taken the least time as well the bulk of the volume of followers (more than 200) to respond within just 20 minutes. RCB for week 3 took the longest ART of more than 3 hours to respond.
Most of the strategies on Twitter for all the teams are around live score updates and creating match day buzz surrounding it. This seems to be working a pretty decent engagement for all the IPL teams and turns out to be a better affair for metro teams like RCB/MI/CSK/KKR leading to higher engagement for them compared to other teams.
In terms of net positive sentiment, Delhi Daredevils and Kolkata Knight Riders lead in Week 3 which seems to be the case even when compared over the course of all the 3 weeks ( Seems strange taking into consideration the recent form of Delhi and KKR.
IPL 6 on YouTube
On YouTube, IPL teams are mostly focusing on getting one on one with the players/support staff and all the never seen behind the scenes footage to resonate with the audience. In week 3, RCB along with Sunrisers and CSK have a healthy average view rate per video of above 1,000 views. Pune Warriors is non-existent on YouTube with no activity recorded by the IPL brand since the past 2 years. RCB was the most active channel this week with more than 50 videos uploaded by the IPL team in week 3 alone. Most of them were focused around individual players, and no prizes for guessing the Gayle content works the best for their engagement factor.
With the attention span of a normal viewer getting shorter day by day, the IPL teams are focusing on shorter length videos (around 1 minute) to tell their stories on YouTube. And I am sure, with a bit of cross promotion on other social networks, the IPL teams would be able to extract more traction on their YouTube Channels.
Conclusion
The IPLT20 website being among the top 1,000 websites visited in India in the past month (Source: Similarweb.com), social has contributed to around 6% of the overall traffic. And with the social integration of IPL growing in as the tournament progresses, I see that trend increasing.
Chennai Super Kings lead all the three networks in Week 3 boasting of maximum participation and engagement everywhere while Pune Warriors are lagging behind off the field as well. With Gayle’s mayhem in this week (his follower base grew by 38K within 24 hours of his knock), we can expect RCB and Gayle to be dominating next week’s Social Media Charts. But then, there are still a few days for this week to end and some interesting matches coming up. So you never know what can happen on the field and off it.
What do you predict will be the scenario in Week 4 in IPL? Do let us know your thoughts in the comments.
P.S. Unmetric is an advertiser at Lighthouse Insights.
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