Since its inception in 2014, Indian Super League (ISL) has got a massive reception from fans around the world. India has the second-largest population so the fanbase of ISL is pretty huge. But surprisingly, not only Indians but people from around the globe follow ISL.
According to a study by Spanish sports business institution, Deportes y Finanzas, ISL has been the fourth most engaging football league on Instagram with 38.1 million fan interactions in the first of 2020.
📲⚽ @LaLiga, the football league in the world with the highest engagement on #instagram during the first half of 2020!
— Deportes&Finanzas® (@DeporFinanzas) July 30, 2020
319M of interactions! 💙💬🔝🔝 pic.twitter.com/Cbu09UHFzH
LaLiga, Premier League and Bundesliga are the only leagues which had higher fan interactions on Instagram in this time period. More interestingly, ISL ranks higher than even Serie A despite Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the most famous football stars, playing in the Italian league.
LaLiga had the highest fan interactions with 319m followed by Premier League with 296m. But after that, there is a huge gap. Bundesliga had 53m fan interactions and ISL had 38.1m.
A Mumbai-based social media industry expert told IANS: “Sports are being consumed in huge numbers among the extremely tech-savvy Indian youth in the digital space.”
“European football has been pretty popular, but the increasing numbers of the ISL only show that football in India is being embraced by the country’s millennials. I think ISL has enormous potential to engage more fans globally across other platforms as well.”
ISL has been hugely successful in representing Indian football globally. It gets global coverage and has a huge fan following. The hype surrounding ISL is such that the fans want EA Sports to include ISL in FIFA 21.
The 2020-21 season of ISL is expected to start from November in Goa. The whole tournament will be held only at one place by creating a bio bubble due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
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