A new report published this week has ranked FINA as the most improved International Federation (IF) on digital channels, following strong growth across its social media platforms in 2019.
The 2020 #SportOnSocial League Table by Red Torch, which ranks IFs on their performance across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, revealed that FINA climbed 14 places to 10th in the overall ranking.
On Facebook, 11% of FINA engagement was a result of video sharing, more than any other IF, following the huge number of viral world-record videos posted by FINA in real-time during the 2019 FINA World Championships in Gwangju (KOR).
FINA achieved staggering growth during the 2019 FINA World Championships in Gwangju compared to the 2017 FINA World Championships in Budapest, showing evidence of the benefits of FINA’s revamped social media strategy:
-1.3M Total engagement on Facebook (+90%)
-5.8M Total Video Views on Facebook (+546%)
-33k New followers on Instagram (+168%)
-127K Total engagement on Twitter (+52%)
Following the publication of the report, FINA President Dr Julio C. Maglione said:
"This report clearly demonstrates the huge success of engaging the aquatic sports community on social media in 2019, in particular during the FINA World Championships in Gwangju. Our aim was engage with our fans around the world throughout our major events and World Championships and bring them closer to the action than ever before. The efforts of our digital team working around the clock are clearly visible in the results of this new report.”
To confirm the good results on social media in 2019, FINA reached also an important achievement in another prestigious study produced by Burson Cohn & Wolfe: the 2019 International Sport Federation Social Media Ranking. For the first time, FINA reached the TOP 10 in few rankings, such as the “Most Likes on Instagram” with 5’163’117 likes generated on the FINA posts last year.