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ike is the world’s most marketed brand on social media, according to SportsPro’s list of World’s 50 Most Marketed brands on social media.

The rankings see Nike edge out Emirates Airlines to take top spot, while Adidas came in at third spot, followed by Monster Energy and Red Bull to close out the top 5.

Hookit’s (a world-leading AI-powered sponsorship analytics and valuation platform) proprietary methodology for assessing sponsorship value is built upon its SportGraph and computer vision technology, which tracks the social activity of every major professional athlete, team and league, totalling more than 500,000 accounts.

For the World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands, all social and digital posts from professional athletes, teams and leagues between 1st August 2019 and 1st August 2020 were examined for brand promotion.

More than 25,000 sports organisations and athletes posted during this period, promoting in excess of 7,000 brands across platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, VK, Weibo and YouTube.

SportsPro editorial director, Michael Long, said this list enables sports marketers to make sponsorship decisions more quickly and intelligently than ever by objectively assessing where true value lies in sports marketing through the application of in-depth data analysis, social media monitoring, and consumer insights.

“Supported by three of the world’s leading social media analytics companies, our newly expanded 50MM platform and dedicated content hub paints the most complete picture yet of where value lies in sports marketing – across athletes, brands and properties,” Long said.

He said due to the pandemic, spending on sponsorship is being heavily judged more than ever seen before.

“With marketing budgets being tightened in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, spending on sports sponsorship is being more scrutinised than ever,” Long said.

“Now, with the richer data sets and deeper insights provided by this year’s 50MM rankings, marketers working across all sports can easily identify where the real value lies in order to justify their spending decisions and maximise return on investment,” he said.

Hookit co-founder and chief executive, Scott Tilton: said: “where sponsorship value has traditionally gone unmeasured by brands, Hookit provides the data and insights to empower sports marketers to know where they are getting actual value for their investment, which partners are performing and where there are opportunities for growth within their portfolio.”

“Brands on this list understand that social and digital promotion has become a core pillar to their sponsorship strategies and are building these activations in as key elements in their sponsorship agreements.

“We expect to see this emphasis on digital promotion continue to grow due to the impact of the coronavirus and the ability of sports partners to directly influence their value to sponsors through their massive social channels,” he said.

World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands powered by Hookit – the top ten:
1. Nike
2. Emirates Airlines
3. Adidas
4. Monster Energy
5. Red Bull
6. State Farm
7. Santander
8. Standard Chartered
9. Puma
10. Beko

Last month, SportsPro also released the most marketable athlete powered by Nielson, which saw Lionel Messi take out top spot.