Who’s Winning? NHL Teams: Social Media, Attendance & Performance

With the 2010-11 Stanley Cup playoffs now in full swing, I was curious to see which NHL teams ranked highest for Facebook Likes and Twitter follows. OK before you start, I realize there are a lot more factors to consider in ranking an organization’s social media efforts than just the numbers. They all likely have sophisticated social media strategies that tie back to important business objectives, putting butts in the seats and selling merchandise – while icing an exciting team that is capable of going deep into the playoffs to provide even more revenue.

After I had collected the numbers from the team’s official Facebook and Twitter profiles it became obvious (but not surprising) that organizations with history and solid efforts such over the past few seasons ranked over the teams that have struggled. I decided it would be worthwhile to add in rankings for average game attendance (butts in seats) and their position in the overall standings at the end of the year.

The NHL puts a lot of effort into how teams manage their internet sites, the most obvious being the common template shared by all teams. The template is being stretched to its limits by the individual teams as links to social media can appear in a number of ways, from a local in the header, a link in the footer, a widget within the page of a link that can appear in any number of places within the sub navigation.

Onto the Numbers

The teams with the most followers on Twitter are Montreal (126,938), Vancouver (90,409) and Pittsburgh (81,981) while the teams with the most followers on Facebook are last years champions, Chicago (712,308), Montreal (653,510) and Boston (593,575). Teams with a long rich history such as the Original Six (Canadians, Hawks, Wings, Bruins, Leafs, & Rangers) all ranked within the top 11.

As expected teams like Toronto and Calgary with loyal fan bases had solid scores with social media and attendance but were pulled down by their poor performance this year.

Rankings

I added each team’s ranking for Facebook, Twitter, average game attendance and points together and then sorted them by the best scores. This ranking was created for my own entertainment (yes, I found this entertaining), let me know if you find anything interesting in the results.

NHL Rankings - Twitter, Facebook, Attendance, Standings
Attendance figures from ESPN
End of season rankings from NHL.com

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