The PSL social media landscape in 2019 – Chiefs dominates

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Mahlomola Martin Lefupana 


Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates and Mamelodi Sundowns are the only clubs in South Africa to have more than 1 million followers on social media. The three clubs are also in the top ten of Africa’s social media ranking, with Chiefs ranked fourth with more than 4.9 million, Pirates 5th with 3.6 million and Sundowns ranked 9th with 1.4 million followers. Whilst the PSL dominates the continent in terms of money league, the social media rankings are led by the North African clubs with Al Ahly Sports Club with more than 20 million followers, followed by Zamalek Sports Club with more than 10 million following and Raja Club Athletic with more than 5.1 million.

The top ranking Chiefs, Pirates and Sundowns in Africa’s social media ranking is not a surprise given their status in the continent, especially in the Southern Africa region. The clubs are regarded as the “Big Three” and have dominated South Africa football for the last 40 years and have earned admiration, love and support from across the Southern African region. 

With the season starting on the 3rd of August 2019, Bakoena Sports analysed the PSL landscape, to do this we assessed the number of following of the clubs via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The period of assessment was July 2019: therefore the article provide who top the charts and who hold the relegation zone, only in the social media landscape. 

The table below shows the social media ranking of 16 PSL teams from top to bottom






















All the teams including newly promoted Stellenbosch FC have the three social media platforms used for this review. For this review, we will exclude social media platform YouTube and others.  
According to Hootsuite, Facebook is the most used social media platform in South Africa with penetration rate of 53 %, unsurprisingly, Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates have majority of their following (2 million + each) coming from this medium. What is surprising for football is that Twitter with a penetration of 4 % in South Africa, except for Chiefs, Pirates and Sundowns, all the other 13 teams Twitter accounts are bigger than their Facebook and Instagram, which is more than 80 % of all teams.

Instagram, while is acknowledged as the fasted growing social media platform with 9 % penetration in South Africa is lacking behind the Facebook and Twitter for clubs in terms of followership.














Kaizer Chiefs is the leader in all social media platforms with a whopping 40 % share of the market. The famous club has 4.9 million followers, with Facebook their largest platform with 2.9 million, 1.5 million on Twitter, while Instagram is at less than half a million followers. Orlando Pirates hold 30 % of the social media market share but trail their main rival in all the platforms, but hold a second position with Facebook at over 2 million and Twitter at 1.4 million. Pirates also trails Chiefs in the Instagram platform with less than 30 thousand followers. 
Despite dominating the PSL league titles in the last five years, with 3 titles and many other cup competitions, Sundowns is ranked 3rd on social media platforms. Sundowns hold 11 % of the social media platforms market shares. It worth noting that the three clubs: Chiefs, Pirates and Sundowns control over 80 % of social media following in South Africa. This means that 80 % football social media followers are likely to follow the big three club more than they would follow the other 13 clubs of the PSL. 
Even though the majority social media following is dominated by the big three, there are clubs that have made strides in the last few years. Cape Town City, a club formed in 2016 is ranked 5th on social media platforms with over 300 thousand followers.

Highlands Park, Chippa United and Stellenbosch are the only clubs that have less than 100 thousand followers. It is worth noting that these three clubs have less than 50 thousand followers per platforms, with Instagram the least followed platforms. 
Stellenbosch FC is the club that sits at the bottom of the ranking or rather is the last on the list of social media relegation zone with just overall total followers of just over 28 thousand. 
The PSL list the official website of each club, this however does not include social media platforms. The clubs have a responsibility to grow their digital platforms. It is interesting to note that not all the PSL team’s social media account are verified, perhaps an indication of how far we still need to go. 
With the PSL season starting in early August; it will be interesting to note how the social media audience is going to be when we have another edition in December 2019. 


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