Sports fans who use social media platforms to follow sport are more likely to turn to Facebook than YouTube, according to the second annual Global Sports Media Consumption Report.
The report, published this month by the Perform Group, KantarSport and TV Sports Markets, looks at how sports fans consume sports in 10 major global territories.
The increase in the consumption of sport on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube was one of the stand-out findings of the report.
Between 2011 and 2012, for example, the number of sports fans who use social networks to consume sport in some way rose from 13 to 21 per cent in Great Britain, from 15 to 26 per cent in the US, and from 40 to 47 per cent in China.
Surprisingly, perhaps, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is way ahead of Google’s YouTube as a gateway to sports content.
In Great Britain, 78 per cent of fans who use social networks to follow sport say that they consume sport on Facebook, compared to 38 per cent for YouTube. The figures are 84 per cent and 35 per cent for Germany, 89 per cent and 65 per cent for the US and 90 per cent versus 64 per cent in Brazil.
In China, where the two sites are banned by the government, local social media network RenRen attracts 83 per cent of those who follow sport on a social network.
A further surprising factor is the proportion of fans following sport on social networks who say they use social networks to watch live sport. In China this was 63 per cent, in Russia 46 per cent and in Brazil 43 per cent. In France and Spain almost a third of sports fans who follow sport on social networks say they use them to watch live sport and almost a quarter in Great Britain, Italy, the US and Australia.
To register your interest in the new Global Sports Media Consumption Report, go to: www.tvsportsmarkets.com/gsmcr2012