On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers will compete in the Super Bowl. But which of these two teams are translating that football success into the most social media success? I decided to take a look.
Overall, the 49ers have 57 percent more followers than the Chiefs across the four social networks that I looked at, but the Chiefs appear to be getting more interaction from their fans.
On Instagram, the Chiefs have 1.2 million followers compared to the 2 million for the 49ers.
But when I looked at the average number of likes for the past 10 posts (that were at least 24 hours old), they were pretty much even in the number of likes. The Chiefs averaged 57,859 likes and the 49ers averaged 57,471.
On Facebook, the Chiefs have 1,712,985 likes compared to 4,085,563 for the 49ers. Again, looking at the 10 most recent posts (that were at least 24 hours old), the Chiefs averaged 10,080 likes per post compared to 6,560 for the 49ers.
On Twitter, the 49ers have 2.2 million followers compared to 1.4 million for the Chiefs. But once again, the Chiefs led in average likes per Tweet – 2,774 to 1,671.
TikTok
TikTok appears to be the only place where the Chiefs have a larger following. When I first started tracking NFL teams on TikTok on Oct. 23, 2019, the Chiefs had 98,700 fans and 602,100 likes on the social network. The 49ers had 15,700 fans and 28,100 likes.
A little over three months later, the Chiefs have 520,600 fans and 7 million likes. The 49ers have 161,400 fans and 669,400 likes.
Takeaway
The San Francisco 49ers have a larger following on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. But their fans don’t seem to be as engaged as Chiefs fans. This could be representative of Chiefs fans’ excitement for being in the Super Bowl for the first time in 50 years. But it’s also represents that idea that the number of followers doesn’t matter – it’s how you engage them that matters.