[mkdf_dropcaps type=”normal” color=”#f55549″ background_color=””]T[/mkdf_dropcaps]
he International Cricket Council (ICC) has been ranked as the highest performing International Federation (IF) on social media, according to Burson Cohn & Wolfe Sports (BCW Sports).

The ranking includes both non-Olympic sports and Summer and Winter Olympic sports federations, with the study assessing 120 institutional Twitter accounts, 105 Facebook pages, 93 Instagram accounts, 76 YouTube channels, 61 LinkedIn accounts, and 27 TikTok accounts.

The study used metrics such as overall number of followers, growth rates, posts per day, views per post, and interaction and engagement levels to generate the rankings over the course of 2020.

Ranked in order of followers across all platforms, the ICC topped all others with 59,048,874, followed by FIFA with 37,758,132, and FIBA with 12,233,101 in third place.

The remainder of the top ten is filled with Olympic IFs, except for International Teqball Federation in seventh place and the International Cheer Union in eighth place, with the International Volleyball Federation, World Rugby, World Athletics, International Cycling Union, and the Badminton World Federation making up the remainder of the top 10, respectively.

BCW Sports managing director, Lars Haue-Pedersen, said the results of the study showed IFs around the world significantly grew their followings and engagement rates on social media due to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the cancellation of sporting events.

“Our study shows that smaller, younger IFs have already gone through what many traditional IFs are forced to be going through right now, a digital transformation,” Haue-Pedersen said.

“These younger IFs were forced to do so because of lack of coverage in traditional media and are now in the fast lane.

“It is absolutely stunning to see teqball and cheerleading in the top ten, clearly ahead of many larger, Olympic IFs.

“These more well-established IFs need to act soon if they want to catch up with the younger ones, who for sure will continue to move fast forward.

“This will indeed be an interesting development to follow post-COVID,” he said.

According to the report, the ICC notably recorded a 44.3% increase of Instagram followers in 2020, gaining five million new followers on the platform and ranked as the most followed IF on Facebook and Instagram, as well as the second-most followed on Twitter behind FIFA.