This week the NFL announced a wide ranging partnership with TicToc to engage more with a younger demo on the fast growing platform. Great news as we get closer to kickoff weekend.
What is disappointing still is that many of the NFL’s most addressable faces and impactful individuals; head coaches, remain a vanishing breed on the social front. The amount of time they are seen and talked about during a game is probably more than any player outside of a quarterback, yet for the most part their engagement with the fans, because of their volatile position and their workload demand, is not that high. Sponsorships are also usually left to the offseason or the post career, yet coaches remain the most visible and consistent face on any team depth chart.
We did our annual audit of head coaches on social, with work of Tanner Simkins and the Complete SET Agency
Here is what we found.
There are currently only six NFL head coaches engaged in social same number as last year, down from eight three years ago and seven two years ago, and of the six, now only two, Pete Carroll of the Seahawks and Ron Rivera of the Panthers and also have active Instagram accounts.
Of the six, which also include Sean Payton of the Saints, Mike Tomlin of the Steelers, and Dan Quinn of the Falcons, the most engaged and most authentic continues to be (no surprise), Seahawks coach Carroll who not only pushes team messages and community events, but generates his own thought filled content as well. While all universally make their interaction positive, and do a good amount of retweeting of colleagues, they do avoid controversy, player decisions and much that is not pre-determined.
Of the six, the numbers probably are dictated by the amount of activity, with Carroll, over 2.3 million twitter followers, more than the other six COMBINED. Second is Mike Tomlin of the Steelers at 359,000 with Payton at 323,000. The newer, more energetic voices like Jon Gruden of the Raiders and Sean McVay of the Rams are nowhere to be heard from still, at least on social.
On Instagram, Carroll’s 425,000 also dominate, which shows the amount of time, interest and effort the Seahawks mentor puts into the value of social in tech-savvy Seattle..
Still this is the NFL, and social access is carefully monitored and controlled, although we are seeing more from players in season would be great to get see additional insights from the top. Do we think coaches and assistants have burner accounts managing the goings on in social? Probably. It is not easy, and time is limited, but getting engagement from those calling the signals away from the field would probably be beneficial, interesting and insightful as fans, brands and interested parties look to learn more about the biggest weekly spectacle in pro sports today.
