Mumbai Indians have again shown their dominance not only as of the strongest cricket club in India and an emerging Indian sports brand globally but also emerged as the most engaged in their total engagement across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, IPL franchise for the third consecutive season.
Mumbai Indians, across all digital platforms, got fans’ emotion, attention, and imagination through its total interactions of over 317 Million across all its three social media platforms ( i.e. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) and has earned the cap of the ‘most engaged’ amongst all the competing clubs.
According to the records released by CrowdTangle and Unmetric, RCB has been recorded as the second-best at 277.65 Million and CSK with 189.67 Million which is almost 60 % higher as compared to MI’s last season’s digital fan engagement performance which clearly indicates that MI Paltan’s connect with the club through these innovations more and has improved this year with better ideas and innovations.
MI launched various digital programs to interact with fans like they launched a new interactive prediction game ‘Paltan Play’ on MI’s digital platforms which allowed participants to predict the game on a real-time basis through the MI website and App, the ‘MI Live’ show in its very first year also proved to be a superhit as they featured the pre, mid and post-match shows which were being hosted and participated by MI fans, which gained almost 8 Million video views and over 750K in engagement.
Though IPL 2020 was challenging as the circumstances were worse, faced by sports globally due to the pandemic and the forced restrictions in fan engagement opportunities live in the stadium, due to which the tournament also had to shift to UAE with restrictions with the IPL teams and athletes with a daunting task of connecting with their fans through digital innovations.
The Mumbai Indians spokesperson in an official release stated that: “We are grateful and humbled to have an enviable force of our Paltan behind our boys. Our Paltan is the real source of our motivation in our endeavor to step up our efforts in every aspect both on and off the field. The Paltan are our real heroes. Mumbai Indians’ success on the digital front during this unique IPL season is testament to pioneering stature and following of our club across the globe.”
Interestingly a further study by Spanish firm Deportes & Finanzas (@DeporFinanzas) revealed Mumbai Indians has emerged as the most popular sports team in the world on Facebook for the months of October and November 2020, ahead of teams like Manchester United FC, FC Barcelona, Liverpool FC and Arsenal FC. Deportes’ study on sports teams’ Instagram interactions, puts Mumbai Indians in the third position in the world behind FC Barcelona and Manchester United, for the month of November 2020.
