The Masters effect: How winning a green jacket can double a player’s social media following
Some spoils of winning the Masters are easy to quantify, like one green jacket and around two million dollars.
Others – joy, relief, satisfaction, prestige, profile – are less so.
But new research has attempted to put a figure on the last of those by analysing the social media followings of recent Masters champions.
Tiger Woods, Patrick Reed and Sergio Garcia all saw their audiences swell notably as they closed in on Augusta glory, according to Nielsen Sports.
Reed’s example is the most striking. The American’s Instagram following all but doubled on his way to victory in 2018, increasing by 99 per cent from 59,455 to 118,507 in a week.
Garcia’s following rocketed by 76 per cent as he completed an emotional Masters triumph 12 months earlier, going from 105,956 to 186,527.
And even Woods, one of the most celebrated sportspeople of the 21st century, saw a sizeable increase last year.
His fifth Masters win led to a 19 per cent uplift in Instagram following from 1,562,615 to 1,860,868.
Those players who challenge but fall short do not see anything like as large an increase.
In the year that Garcia’s audience grew by 76 per cent, Thomas Pieters, with 13 per cent uplift, had the next best figures of the top five finishers.
Why social media audience matters
An increased Instagram following enhances the commercial opportunities for sportspeople.
And golf’s audience is particularly attractive to sponsors, especially premium ones.
More than half of the UK’s 9m golf fans are in the ABC1 demographic, according to Nielsen. Three in 10 are in the top two income bands.
Why this year’s Masters can attract high UK audience
The Masters is set to finish earlier this year, as the switch from March to November means reduced daylight hours.
That means a primetime Sunday evening conclusion in the UK, four or five hours earlier than usual.
Last year’s tournament also finished early as tee-times were brought forward to avoid forecasted bad weather.
The extraordinary story of Woods winning a first major for 11 years is clearly also a factor. But the 1.3m UK viewers who tuned in for the final round represented a 77 per cent increase on the three-year average.
Across the whole week, UK TV audience was up 22 per cent.