Top 10 Golf Athletes – February 2019

PGA Tour Players with the Most Engaged Fans

With the PGA Tour hosting tournaments nearly every week on some of the best greens in the world, it creates useful content for players and plenty of opportunities to interact with fans via social media. Rickie Fowler, Ian Poulter, and Bubba Watson secured the top three spots for most social interactions among fans in February 2019. One of the greatest pro golfers of all time, Tiger Woods, dropped one position down to seventh, despite having the largest social media following at 9.4M. Hookit analyzed the total number of interactions each of the top-10 pro golfers received via their social media channels and created valuable insights for reasons behind a few of the players’ rankings.

Key Insights

Rickie Fowler Aces Social Interactions For Number One Spot

Fowler gained 40K new followers, the highest among any of the top-10 pro golfers, because of his win at the Waste Management Phoenix Open tournament in Arizona on February 3rd. The Puma sponsored athlete accumulated 518.5K social interactions across his 13 posts. His one post on Instagram, which shows Fowler with twin babies and captioning the post that he has become an uncle, collected 111K likes and nearly 1K comments.
501.4K of his total interactions in February came from Instagram posts, despite having 1.6M followers on both Twitter and Instagram out of his total 3.4M fans.

Rory McIlroy Lands on The Green At Sixth Position

Well-known pro golfer, Rory McIlroy, managed to jump eight spots even after losing 3.3K net followers in February. McIlroy, who still has 4.4M followers on social media, increased his number of posts from 22 in January to 37 posts in February which contributed to the massive increase in social interactions.
Another reason his social interactions among fans reached 78.9K was due to his performances at the Genesis Open and WGC-Mexico Championship Tournaments, where he placed fourth and second, respectively. In January, when his social interactions only reached 29.6K, he played at the Tournament of Champions and the Farmers Insurance Open Tournament and placed fourth at both events. Because McIlroy increased the number of posts and placed higher at his second tournament in February, Rory was able to claim the sixth spot on this list among active pro-golfers.

Tiger Woods Scores Bogey For Seventh Position

Tiger Woods, who is considered one of the best pro-golfers in history, has the most followers on social media among any other active player. Woods dropped one place after only receiving 76.9K social interactions across his 31 posts, which was an increase from his 15 posts the previous month.
Tiger only participated in one tournament in January, tying for twentieth place. In February, he played in the same two tournaments as McIlroy, the Genesis Open and the WGC-Mexico Championship. However, his performance was not as rewarding as McIlroy’s, placing fifteenth and tenth at the two events. What’s interesting to note is that Woods’ social interactions decreased from January even though the pro-golfer played in more tournaments and posted more frequently across his social media channels the following month. One reason may be due to Tiger unveiling a new set of clubs in January and fans were excited for the new product.

The Wrap Up

Pro-golfers have many opportunities to participate in PGA Tour tournaments, which occur often. Although these tournaments are excellent ways for athletes to generate content for fans on social media, it isn’t always the case these posts will boost social interactions. This can be demonstrated from Tiger Woods and his low social interactions, despite playing in more tournaments from the previous month. However, these interactions can be instrumental for brands that choose to sponsor those top athletes and looking to increase their brand awareness and drive value. Analyzing the top ranked pro-golf athletes according to social interactions and main drivers behind those interactions from fans can help create valuable insights for any brand looking for new partnerships.
Note: All data is from official Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram Business accounts. Any personal Instagram account data is not included in these rankings.

The right metrics and insights can help sponsor brands understand which of their sponsored properties are most effective and drive higher ROI. Sponsor brands can gain this competitive advantage by leveraging the Hookit platform to make effective sponsorship decisions and strategy. Contact us today for a free demo of our powerful sports sponsorship platform.