By: Adam Margolin, Media Analytics Executive
As esports grows around the globe, so does its social media presence. With multiple events and tournaments during the year across all esports teams and event organizers share posts on social media highlighting matches just like normal sporting events.
Take a look at FaZe Clan, a top tier gaming organization from North America. Like most other gaming organizations, FaZe Clan has teams participating in a variety of Esports such as CS:GO, FIFA, COD, and Rocket League. While having teams across different games is great exposure, it makes analyzing data and mentions for that team across social media difficult.
Multiple teams for the same organization could be playing in separate tournaments at the same time, leading to divided attention. Using hashtags or mentions, for example, is a good way to engage with the different games all while connecting back to the one organization.
During the beginning of the League of Legends Spring Split in 2019, tweets were analyzed to see which gaming organizations who were participating in the event were the most mentioned.
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The London based organization Fnatic was the most mentioned team during those few days of play with 20% of all organic posts being related to them. They raked in more than 15% of total retweets during this time, and they had the most likes as well. This is surprising because Fnatic actually lost both of the matches it played in over that weekend. One of them however, was a “game of the week.”
A factor for the abundance of love Fnatic received over that weekend was that they, like FaZe Clan, have several teams across different games. In Esports, teams are playing every weekend while in season, and some games’ seasons overlap. While Fnatic performed poorly in League of Legends, they have historically, and have currently, top tier teams in most of the games they participate in. While it wasn’t the result they wanted, fans of the organization had different games to tune in to, where results were better.
Interacting with fans on social media is a big component of esports. While there are competitive players in an organization, there are also content creators. This is the basis for most of the organizations in esports. They started off making gaming videos and interacting with fans. As teams branch into competitve gaming, they also attract investors. Million dollar prize pools and large fan bases will interest almost anybody. The branch into competitive gaming is a great way to garnish a team’s growth and success.