New League Could Get Massive Boost from WPS' Digital Rolodex

Wanted to share a discovery - the inactive twitter page called @womensprosoccer has today almost 422,000 followers. To put that in context, that's a ranking of 16th out of all soccer related accounts around the globe, according to the social media ranking index Sports Fan Graph - one rank higher than US Soccer and one rank lower than Marseille the French Ligue 1 team (FC Barcelona is #1 with 13M followers).

Pretty cool hey? Reaching almost half a million followers is some pretty impressive scale from a social media perspective. Growing a critical mass of followers and fans is the first key milestone for any social media strategy, and seems to me that these 422,000 people would be a solid follower base any new league would like access to.

The website linked to the Twitter account is presumably the former league, however I can't confirm because the website is down. Transferring an account to a new owner is pretty simple to do logistically - change the email associated to the account and then plug in a new confidential password. But legally, it could be a little more complicated depending on the ownership - whoever that might be. Would the owner of the Twitter account @womensprosoccer please stand up? Seems like it would be someone US Soccer would want to talk to.

What's more, despite being inactive with no updates since mid-March of this year, the account following has grown by 6,000 people since the announcement of the league on November 21st. What that tells me is that there are fans out there so starved for content that they will follow a virtually dead account with the hopes to get some information pushed their way. Okay, a tad dramatic perhaps, but then again perhaps not. There has been some news dribble out of teams this week - coaching announcements from the former WPS team the Boston Breakers and the start-up FC Kansas City - but no further news from the league itself. 

Adopting a Twitter fan base of 422k people would be a massive boost for the new women's pro league. The challenge then - and for any league, team, business - is how to monetize the social influence built up?

Thanks for reading. Follow along on this blog or get updates on Twitter @wandarful10.

Source: Sports Fan Graph

Source: Sports Fan Graph.


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Thoughts on the Launch of the US Women's Pro League
Women's Pro Soccer and the Search for the Avid Fan