Instagram Ball Sports Audience Content Opportunity Analysis™ Q4 2022

Content Opportunity Methodology

1. Measure & Categorize: Sample a large number of social posts to find ones that are significantly outperforming the average.
2. Identify Top Themes: Identify the themes that are resonating most with the audience by sorting the themes by their aggregated performance metrics.
3. Identify a Benchmark: Identify content themes that are performing above and under an average benchmark for the industry based on views & engagements.
4. Identify Opportunities: Look at the data and find the content themes that are resonating with the audience based on a set of top creators.
5. Repeat For Each Platform: Repeat the analysis for every platform that matters to your brand and audience to find platform-specific opportunities.

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Instagram Content Bucket Definitions

• Team Celebrations: These videos capture teammates celebrating wins after games and championships.
• Ball Sports Humour: Funny, sports-related skits and clips of comedic moments in ball sports, excluding football. 
• Standout Plays: Single takes highlighting impressive play and shots from professional and amateur-level ball sport athletes. 
• Interview Clips: Full interviews and interview clips with coaches and athletes including dialogue on sport-related and personal topics. 
• Basketball & Football Esports: An inside look at esports gameplay from NBA 2K and FIFA.
• Athlete Spotlight: Videos that focus on a single athlete and their performance and behaviour in games, training, and other environments. 
• Off-Duty Athletes: This category highlights professional athletes outside their respective sports while participating in other activities or in their daily life. 
• Football Fans: Football fans display their passion for the game while watching matches, interacting with players or during stunts like pitch invading. 
• Skills & Drills: Players show off their talent and skill during training. Top-performing videos showcase football players using fancy footwork to defend the ball. 
• Football Stadium Highlights: Footage from inside professional football stadiums across the world.
• Football News & Gossip: News and gossip in the football world including team and player stats, roundtable discussion footage, and breaking news about players and clubs.
• Football Goals: This category features clips of impressive goals from talented football players during matches and training.
• Football Humour: Football-related content that pokes fun at players and fans or highlights comedic moments in the sport.

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Team Celebrations is an extreme performing content opportunity, averaging over 3X the views & engagement rate on YouTube.

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Excellent performing content categories for the Ball Sports audience on Instagram include:

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Good performing content categories for the Ball Sports audience on Instagram include:

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Substandard performing content categories for the Ball Sports audience on Instagram include:

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Low performing content categories for Ball Sports audience on Instagram include:

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Extreme Performing Segment:

Team Celebrations

These videos capture teammates celebrating wins after games and championships. The video examples include the Manchester City team celebrating after winning the FA cup (first video below) and members of the Las Vegas Aces celebrating their WBNA championship (second video below). 

Tactics to Implement:

• Behind-the-Scenes: Both videos take place in the team’s dressing rooms giving viewers a BTS view of the team’s facilities and painting a more personal picture of how teammates celebrate, away from the press and fans. 
• Audio: The raw audio of the footage includes cheering and reactions from the teams and captures the energy and excitement of the scenes. 

Top Format:

• Hashtags: 5 & 0

34.3M  Views

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9.7M Views

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Extreme Performing Segment:

1. Ball Sports Humour

Funny, sports-related skits and clips of comedic moments in ball sports, excluding football. 

Tactics to Implement:

• On-Screen Captions: Videos include on-screen captions with emojis to provide context for the videos. 
• AV Effects: In the first video below, slow motion and a coloured filter, along with a stark change in music, are used to emphasize the player’s funny behaviour. By contrast, the second video uses original audio that includes remarks from ESPN's commentators and the laughter from the crowd. 
• Reposted Content: ESPN reposted both videos from other sports outlets and tagged them in the video captions. 

Top Format:

• Hashtags: 0 & 0

18M Views

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16.2M  Views

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2. Standout Plays

Video clips highlighting impressive plays and shots from professional and amateur-level ball sport athletes. 

Tactics to Implement:

• Reposts With Captions: Both videos have been reposted from other sources and include on-screen images of the original captions used with the videos. The original source is also tagged in the post. 
• Replays: In the first video below, the play is shown from multiple angles and provides a slow-motion view of the shot. The second video below shows the play twice, once at full speed and once in slow motion.
• Sports Fan Reactions: The cheers and reactions from the crowds can be heard in both videos, adding to the excitement of the plays. 

Top Format:

• Hashtags: 1 & 0

10.7M  Views

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8M Views

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Outliers: These videos were omitted from their content buckets as ‘viral’ outliers for exceeding 3x the views and engagements of their respective benchmarks.

Athlete Spotlight

Content: ESPN shared this video celebrating Serena William’s career after she announced her retirement. The video features a compilation of images of the tennis star waving to fans and uses an interview clip with Williams for the audio.

16.4M Views

Interview Clips

Content: Footage from a post-match interview with Serena Williams after she played in her final US Open. A tweet featuring a quote from the interview is displayed on-screen.

8.9M Views

Skills & Drills

Content: Professional Football player, Marcelo Viera, shows off his impressive freestyle football skills before a match. 

28M Views