NHL Social Media Audit
By:Luke Lawton
Overview
The National Hockey League is one of the oldest professional sports leagues in the world being over 100 years old, but can the league adapt to the times and hop on the new social media wave to keep up with the other leagues? Out of the top four professional sports leagues (i.e., National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League) the NHL is least followed on Instagram, X, TikTok, and Facebook. The NHL roughly totals 20 million followers cross the big four social medias with X being the most followed with 6.9 million followers. The NBA dominates social medias and just on Instagram has 86.5 million followers which is 4 times the amount of the NHL as a brand.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Weaknesses
There biggest weakness is there X account, formerly known as Twitter, even though it is second most followed account it is boring. They should use their X to show how much fun hockey is. They use X to strictly get information out there like the schedule for that night of games. Yes, it is very informative, and they do not need to stop posting this if they would have fun and just post funny pictures or videos it would make the NHL look not as serious and fun for people to want to watch.
They should use X to get their younger audience captivated and let Facebook do all the mediatory boring stuff that an older person would want to know.
Strengths
The NHL is understanding the social media game more as time progresses and sees what other leagues are doing so, they can get as many people as possible to watch their product. The League is giving its audience what it wants more and more on all platforms. People want the league and the players to open up and show the viewer their personality’s and with the rise of young stars in the NHL they are taking advantage of this and putting more fun content out showing off the personalities of these athletes. This is what the NBA does the best and is why they dominate every social media. If you like the payers, you will want to watch these athletes play and showing that they are humans just like everyone else and people will tune in.
Another big advantage and strength that the NHL plays toward is how creative hockey ion general is. They are very good at posting highlight reel goals right away, and even funny moments from the game as-well. TikTok is a huge contributor to this and does this the best.
Threats
The MLB is their biggest threat because the MLB like the NHL are seemingly dying leagues, but the MLB us making a resurgence and using social media as one of the biggest reasons for that. When the MLB made major rule changes, they promoted these on social media in various ways like, asking players, coaches, and fans how they felt about them. This helped us as the audience get to know what they were thinking and get us to watch the new version of baseball.
The NHL knows that they are the U.S.’s least popular league, and the biggest threat to the NHL is themselves. The NHL is not going to be catching the NBA or NFL anytime soon and if they can just catch up with the times people will get behind the NHL and start watching and following more.
Check for Yourself
Instagram- NHL
X- NHL
TikTok- NHL
Facebook- NHL
Don’t forget to check my personal Audit File.