Brief:

• The Los Angeles Dodgers were the top Major League Baseball team in terms of social media this year, despite losing the World Series to the Houston Astros, according to a study by Shareablee Sports made available to Mobile Marketer. The Dodgers saw 27.9 million user actions on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter during the season, while the Astros racked up just 9.7 million social media actions, a measurement that includes reactions, comments, shares, retweets and likes across all three social channels.
• Facebook-owned Instagram, the photo-sharing app with more than 800 million users worldwide, was the leading social media platform during the latest MLB season with 203 million total actions. That compares with 80.4 million actions on Facebook and 30.8 million on Twitter, Shareblee said.
• In terms of individual posts, the Dodgers’ announcement that the team won its first National League pennant since 1988 was the most popular with 207,839 actions on Instagram and 82,449 actions on Twitter. The top professional baseball post on Facebook was the New York Yankees’ announcement that Aaron Judge won the 2017 Home Run Derby during All-Star week in July.

Insight:

Shareablee Sports, a new division of data analytics company Shareablee, shows the power of professional sports to capture the attention of audiences on social media as people turn to the platforms to share their thoughts and feelings about teams, players, news and other league developments. That high level of emotional engagement gives brands an opportunity to reach audiences on social media and mobile devices any time of the year, not just mid-season.

Digital media this year helped the MLB achieve its 15th straight season of revenue growth, surpassing $10 billion for the first time, according to a report in Forbes. MLB Advanced Media, the internet and interactive branch of the league, helped to drive revenue even as game attendance declined. The MLB this year saw attendance dip below 73 million in paid attendance for the first time since 2002. The league’s revenue growth also was helped by postseason play. This year’s World Series between the Astros and Dodgers lasted a full seven games, and Los Angeles is one of the biggest media markets in the U.S.

Camping World, Coca-Cola, Doosan, Nathan's Famous, Old Dominion Freight Lines, W.B. Mason, Google-owned YouTube TV and 5 Hour Energy all signed up as new sponsors to the league this year. Those big name brands helped to drive a 12% increase in sponsorship revenue from a year earlier, Forbes said in a separate report. YouTube TV, the live TV streaming service of the video-sharing site, was the first-ever presenting sponsor of the World Series. The company had a two-minute ad that was seamlessly integrated into the pregame show for the first game of the championship on Fox.