Participants Collectively Earn 27.6 Million Engagements
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With the Super Bowl in sight, the NFL’s Divisional Round playoffs serve as a litmus test to determine which teams are true contenders for football’s biggest prize. Each conference’s top seed finally enters the mix after watching and resting during Super Wild Card Weekend, while the other six championship hopefuls aim to maintain momentum from a week prior. This season, it was Philadelphia and Kansas City waiting in the wings, and both the Eagles and Chiefs showed their mettle with wire-to-wire victories on Saturday. Sunday’s games delivered more drama, with the Cincinnati Bengals upsetting the AFC East champion Bills in Buffalo to set up an AFC Championship rematch with the Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers dispatching the Dallas Cowboys to reach their third NFC Championship game in four years. As a continuation of our NFL Playoffs coverage, we once again used MVP’s social platform to examine which teams generated the most discussions online, what games were most compelling, and the overall value delivered across social media. Our analysis included text, image, and video content across all eight teams’ owned Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter channels from January 18-23. We found that in less than a week, the franchises – led by a pair of NFC rivals – collectively generated $8.5M worth of post value.
An offense featuring six Pro Bowlers including MVP Finalist Jalen Hurts helped propel the Philadelphia Eagles to the top of the NFC, finishing the season with a 14-3 record and the No. 1 seed. With that came a bye week to start the playoffs, but the “Fly Eagles Fly” crowd made its presence known on social media immediately once the Birds had their chance to take the field. During the Divisional Round playoffs, the Eagles earned the top spot among remaining postseason teams in four different social rankings. With 4.97 million total engagements resulting in the creation of 87 million impressions, Philadelphia generated $1.69M worth of post value during the period. In addition to topping the field in total post value, they also led in average post value with $6,426 per post – pipping NFC East foe Dallas’s $6,382 for the top spot. After Dallas held the social crown a week earlier, the Cowboys dropped to second behind Philadelphia in both impressions and post value – with 76.2 million and $1.53M, respectively – but they dropped all the way to sixth in overall impressions after their loss to San Francisco.
While the Eagles led all teams in overall engagements, each of the other three conference finalists surpassed their average of 18,891. San Francisco led the way with 22,705 engagements per post, followed by Cincinnati in second with 20,757 and Kansas City in third with 20,581. For the second straight week, however, Cincinnati earned the highest engagement rate, increasing their figure from 5.16% to 7.44% as the stakes rose. Perhaps because of their intense matchup in the Buffalo cold, their opponents, the Bills, finished second in the category with a 6.26% engagement rate during the period.
Highmark Stadium was the site of this week’s top heavyweight bout, with the Bills Mafia eager to help will their beloved team to the AFC title game against Kansas City. But Joe Burrow and the defending AFC champions had other ideas, as they raced out to an early 14-point lead and ultimately won the contest by a score of 27-10. Despite the margin of victory, Cincinnati and Buffalo were responsible for the most combined engagements among all matchups last weekend, with the pair’s combined total of 7.63 million narrowly edging the 7.62 million engagements collectively earned by San Francisco and Dallas. However, Sunday’s late NFC showdown in Santa Clara created the most combined impressions and post value. The historical rivals – meeting in the playoffs for the second consecutive season – jointly created 138.7 million impressions and were the only pair to each exceed $1M in post value for the week. Their combined post value of $2.69M represented 31.7% of the total generated by all eight teams. Notably, the Eagles-Giants matchup on Saturday night accounted for the second-most value with $2.33M between the NFC East squads.
An evident trend from the postseason’s opening weekend remained during the divisional round, as the winning teams overwhelmingly outperformed their defeated foes in all metrics. The winners’ collective post value of $5.17M was 55.5% higher than their counterparts, while their total engagements were 2.02x higher.
Consistency was also the theme among social platform rankings as the playoffs progressed. For the second straight week, the majority of team posts were shared on Twitter. After accounting for 50.9% of all posts during Super Wild Card Weekend, 932 posts on the platform from the conference semifinalists this week equaled 52.9% of the overall total. The rash of activity resulted in 169.5 million total impressions on Twitter, while teams created 148.4 million on Facebook and 138 million on Instagram. However, despite only 284 team IG posts, content on the image-sharing app was once again responsible for more than 75% of the total weekly engagements – 20.7 million.
Each platform proved to be a worthwhile medium this week, with the post value generation gap narrowing slightly. All three apps were responsible for at least 30% of the total post value, with Facebook and Instagram experiencing upticks of roughly 1% from Super Wild Card Weekend and Twitter earning 36.8% of the pie after receiving 39% last week.
The Bengals, Chiefs, Eagles, and 49ers are all just one win away from playing for the Lombardi Trophy in Glendale, Arizona on February 12. Undoubtedly, tensions and anxiety at Lincoln Financial Field and Arrowhead Stadium will be high on Sunday, and recent history suggests the resulting excitement will spill over onto social media channels for each of the four teams. Average social metrics across the board rose week-over-week, with common trends including the winning factor remaining present through 10 postseason games thus far. MVP will continue to monitor social activity during Conference Championship Sunday as a pair of teams punch their tickets to Super Bowl LVII.
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