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As a sports fan, I’m particularly excited about this week’s newsletter. That’s not to say that I haven’t been excited about the previous brands I’ve covered—after all, I’ve been lucky enough to profile some of the leading luminaries in technology, beauty, fashion, and snacks. But last time I checked, none of those brands were crossing people over and raining threes.
I’m excited not only because this is a newsletter about sports, but also because, as with the best of these newsletters, it profiles a convergence between creator culture and culture at large. More specifically, it shows how creator culture has (yet again) pushed culture at large forward.
You know how back in middle school, with the five-paragraph essay structure, it was always kind of hard to introduce the thesis statement in an organic way? (That’s the main memory I have of middle school, anyway—I might be blocking out some other stuff.) It always felt kind of clunky, like you were just dropping a big box labeled “thesis” in the middle of the room. Anyway, my thesis is that the recent rise of female athletes in broader popular culture is directly tied to the increased saturation of creators within everyday life. Female athletes are uniquely suited to this emerging ecosystem, in which athletes are not only the people on the court or the field or the rink, but also the creators documenting everything, and taking fans behind the scenes. And nowhere is this dynamic—and, again, female athletes’ unique advantage—on greater display than women’s college basketball.
Conveniently, there happened to just be a tournament of some sort, which you might have heard something about. It happened in March, and it was pretty crazy. Perhaps data from this tournament will help support my claims? That sure would be nifty.
You know what else was difficult for me in middle school? Again with those five-paragraph essays, it was always tricky transitioning from the intro, which presented the thesis statement, to the paragraphs where you introduce evidence. I never really mastered that. Anywho, here’s why I’m right.
When we circled March Madness on the HBBIP content calendar, we were particularly curious about female college basketball stars. I had a hunch that their viral impact would be especially noticeable. On what evidence was I basing this hunch?
At some point during my sports consumption throughout March Madness, this graphic (courtesy of Boardroom) caught my eye:
That’s four female college basketball stars outpacing Cooper Flagg, a surefire No. 1 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft. And not just outpacing—Bueckers and Johnson both double up his follower total entirely. I for one was shocked by the scope of this discrepancy. Then again, if Flagg did have the lead, he’d probably blow it.
And it’s not just the female stars who are pulling in followers—it’s the teams themselves. An investigation by yours truly uncovered the following stats:
Granted, this picture isn’t true for every school (cough Duke cough), and the universities included in the graph are all traditional women’s college basketball powerhouses. (I can confirm as a Stanford fan that there’s absolutely no reason to follow the men’s basketball team, either on Instagram or anywhere else.) However, some of them also have a tradition of strong men’s programs, particularly UConn, which in addition to its championship last week also boasts recent back-to-back men’s championships. So I was surprised to see how lopsided the women’s team’s advantage was. I’m sure Dan Hurley will take the news calmly and in stride.
But I don’t want to turn this newsletter into a Battle of the Sexes. Female college basketball stars, like female athletes in general, deserve to be celebrated for their own merit, not merely as a comparison point to men’s sports. Call me crazy, but maybe this right should be extended to all women, regardless of how good they are at sports! It’s a novel concept, but we might as well give it a go.
Having established that female college basketball stars pack a potent punch on social media, we (by which I mean ‘I’) directed our crackerjack Data Operations team to measure the social media conversation around the Women’s NCAA Tournament. We/I had three main objectives:
That last point is particularly interesting, at least to me: by treating the athletes themselves as brands in our back end, and treating all posts that mentioned them as brand mentions, we (by which this time I mean the Data Operations team) found a way to reflect these athletes’ full viral impact. After all, if athletes are creators, then they’re also increasingly brands in their own right. (Does that mean that creators are brands, too? Absolutely. Sometimes literally.)
Here’s what we found when we looked at our U.S. Creator Panel from March 18 to April 7 (accounting for one day of post-championship content creation):
Top 10 NCAAW Tournament Teams and Players by EMV
You get no points for guessing that Paige Bueckers and UConn would dominate the rankings—that’s basically like correctly calling a 1-seed versus a 16-seed. Still, I was surprised by the extent to which Bueckers lapped not only her school, but the entire field. In general, players performed as strongly as the teams themselves, and in many cases proved strongly: Juju Watkins, who suffered an unfortunate ACL injury mid-tournament, placed ahead of her USC Trojans, while Hailey Van Lith was single-handedly powering viral hype for TCU, which didn’t rank amid the top 10. Meanwhile, Sarah Strong of UConn and Lauren Betts of UCLA further cemented those schools as social media powerhouses.
When it came to post count—in this case, the number of times that these players and teams were mentioned in content from other creators—it’s a similar story, with Texas swapping in for LSU. Paige Bueckers has a less-pronounced lead, while Juju Watkins ascends, likely due to sports media conversation around her injury.
So much so that, when it comes to creator count—the number of distinct social media accounts that mentioned these teams and players—Juju Watkins takes the lead. Again, the trio of Watkins, Bueckers, and UConn are well ahead. But now we see Flau’jae Johnson, LSU basketball star and rapper, entering the picture as well. More on her in a bit.
The engagement numbers are further proof that it’s Paige Bueckers’ world, and we’re all just living in it.
The impressions numbers certainly don’t complicate that picture. Content about Bueckers powered 312.8M impressions, roughly equal to the combined 346.7M impressions driven by content mentioning UConn, Juju Watkins, or Hailey Van Lith. It might not be accurate to say that Bueckers is bigger than the sport as a whole, but it’s impossible to deny that she’s pushing it to new heights.
And how about these creator-athletes as brand partners? The data is a bit more mixed on that front, though in some ways it makes sense: the athletes themselves might not be at their busiest as brand advocates during March Madness, given that they have bigger things on their minds. Still, we saw some interesting results:
Here’s where Flau’jae Johnson makes her triumphant return: as a top EMV-driver for both Oreo and Experian, Johnson leveraged her star power and inspiring life story to become one of March’s signature presences. Meanwhile, apart from Kiki Iriafen’s tireless promotion of her alma mater USC, these athletes tended not to post about their universities. While Watkins and Van Lith scored hits for Nabisco and Gatorade, respectively, this category also introduced other stars of the sport, like Joyce Edwards of South Carolina, Aneesah Morrow of LSU, and Hannah Hidalgo of Notre Dame.
All these metrics—EMV, engagement, impressions—reflect the depth of social media users’ enthusiasm for women’s sports. It’s more than a fad, or something to pay lip service to: thanks to dynamic athletes with world-class social media savvy, women’s collegiate basketball has emerged as a powerful force not only in creator marketing, but commerce and culture at large.
And there you have it. I was always pretty good at the conclusion paragraph. Definitely the easiest part of middle school for me.
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