The baseball season is upon us, and while we’re watching the action unfold on the diamond this spring, a whole other battle is unfolding in social media. Teams are battling it out for fans to follow, retweet, like, share and favorite every hour of every day. The teams below are the top three on MVPindex as of April 16, 2015 and are ranked according to their overall reach and fan engagement across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google +. Let’s take a look at the standings and see who is leading the pack on social media to kick off the 2015 season.
1. New York Yankees
The Yankees are the number one baseball team on social media according to MVPindex. The Yankees’ Instagram, Twitter and Facebook have a combined audience of more than 10.2 million followers and fans, which would fill Yankee Stadium 203 times and puts them ahead of the second place team by more than 3.8 million fans and followers.
The Yankees also have the highest engagement rate in the MLB. Fans on Facebook like a post from the Yankees 17,019 times on average. They also share Yankees content an average of 1,758 times per post. These numbers don’t stray much on Twitter, with Yankees tweets averaging 190 retweets/tweet over the last three months.
RECAP: Stephen Drew’s pinch-hit grand slam vaults #Yankees past Orioles: http://t.co/OvGxfrD0hg #PinstripePride pic.twitter.com/GruiVYvg7G
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) April 14, 2015
2. Boston Red Sox
The Yankees’ rival comes in second in the baseball social media rankings on MVPindex. The Red Sox are the second most popular team on social media, with a total of 6.4 million fans across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This number puts them firmly in second place on Facebook and Twitter, but 4th overall on Instagram. The Red Sox post an average of 648 tweets/month on Twitter, or about 1 tweet per hour every 28 days. Fans respond in kind, too. The Sox have 5 of the top 50 tweets in baseball this month, and those tweets have been retweeted a total of 17,193 times. That’s well above the average number for a Red Sox tweet, which is about 52 retweets/tweet.
T.G.I.F. #RedSox Orioles start a four-game set tonight at 7:10pm. pic.twitter.com/ek7rI8Bxb8
— Boston Red Sox (@RedSox) April 17, 2015
3. Los Angles Dodgers
The Dodgers come in third both because they are tied for 4th in total followers (4.17 million) and for their ability to blow the competition away on Instagram. The Dodgers are the most followed baseball team on the photo sharing platform. They possess the entire top 10, and 49 of the top 100 posts to the platform this month. The average likes on a top 10 Instagram photo this month? 63,877. That’s the equivelant to a sold out Dodger stadium engaging with each photo while more than 7,800 fans did the same at home.
Alex Guerrero’s first career #walkoff hit seals the #Dodgers’ comeback victory over the Mariners.
A photo posted by Los Angeles Dodgers (@dodgers) on