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How many Instagram followers did Argentinian and French World Cup players gain after the Finals

Getting social media data through Databar to find the growth in Instagram follower counts for Argentinian and French players.

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by Databar

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The World Cup is the world’s most anticipated and viewed sporting event, estimated to be watched by billions of people globally. Every 4 years, countries anticipate this esteemed tournament organized by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), which determines which of 32 international men’s football (soccer) teams will take home the championship. 

This year, Argentina played France in the World Cup Final. With Lionel Messi’s World Cup Instagram picture breaking the record for most liked picture on the platform, we noticed that social media played a massive role in World Cup coverage and reactions. This resulted in significant boosts in social media followings for these soccer players. To see how the World Cup can propel someone to fame via social media, we were curious how Instagram followers grew for each player.

Using the Databar.ai, we gathered the Instagram follower counts and data before and after the Finals to see how follower counts have grown.

World Cup Players

We gathered data for the folllowing players/usernames on Instagram:

  • k.mbappe
  • upamecano
  • raphaelvarane
  • thuram_17
  • o.dembele7
  • theo3hernandez
  • oliviergiroud
  • antogriezmann
  • axel_disasi
  • ibrahimakonate
  • adrienrabiot_25
  • aurelientchm
  • jkeey4
  • tagliafico3
  • leomessi
  • nicoigonzalez
  • rodridepaul
  • papugomez_official
  • lucasalario
  • lucasocampos11
  • angeldimariajm
  • leoparedes20
  • tucucorrea
  • locelsogiovani
  • emi_martinez26

The players highlighted blue are players from the Argentina team.

Getting the data

In order to gather the data, we looked at the Instagram usernames of each player from the France and Argentina teams (shown above) and entered them into a Databar table:

The resulting dataset includes 25 total players. Next we added the social media enrichments to the table to gather bios, followers, followings, and other data from each player's social media profile.

Through Databar.ai, we're able to connect to social media APIs without code and schedule enrichments to gather Instagram followers of each player in our dataset. Once the enrichment was installed, all that was left to do was to click the 'Run all rows' button to launch the enrichment and gather Instagram data for each row in our table.

The result

We scheduled the enrichment to run 4 times: once on December 17 '22 before the match, December 19 '22 after the match, December 22 '22 (5 days after the match), and January 14 (almonst a month after the Finals). The resulting data is shown below:

Username Team Followers Dec 17 '22 Followers Dec 19 '22 Followers Dec 22 '22 Followers Jan 14 '23
k.mbappe FRA                    78,469,149                    83,605,440                    88,059,361                    94,814,369
upamecano FRA                         664,021                         681,504                         714,616                         777,844
raphaelvarane FRA                    20,278,089                    20,337,053                    20,394,479                    20,574,392
thuram_17 FRA                         402,583                         436,720                         497,976                         588,030
o.dembele7 FRA                    12,567,120                    12,647,966                    12,732,668                    13,048,066
theo3hernandez FRA                      3,349,584                      3,396,963                      3,436,095                      3,494,161
oliviergiroud FRA                      1,841,900                      2,010,658                      2,167,099                      2,389,040
antogriezmann FRA                    37,649,124                    37,800,109                    37,943,589                    38,314,759
axel_disasi FRA                           46,840                           56,370                           63,153                           75,774
ibrahimakonate FRA                      1,186,686                      1,219,270                      1,264,374                      1,329,901
adrienrabiot_25 FRA                      2,209,442                      2,234,510                      2,256,994                      2,288,831
aurelientchm FRA                      2,936,930                      3,075,508                      3,210,585                      3,510,854
jkeey4 FRA                      2,050,145                      2,100,703                      2,148,045                      2,298,517
tagliafico3 ARG                      2,102,815                      2,367,439                      2,763,313                      3,285,677
leomessi ARG                  391,528,134                  399,221,461                  407,135,856                  418,980,396
nicoigonzalez ARG                         783,141                         881,178                      1,001,678                      1,118,957
rodridepaul ARG                      7,778,547                      8,738,919                    10,063,780                    11,114,967
papugomez_official ARG                      5,408,917                      5,680,585                      6,215,321                      6,708,683
lucasalario ARG                         994,764                         997,120                         999,294                      1,000,430
lucasocampos11 ARG                         739,679                         756,665                         778,190                         778,190
angeldimariajm ARG                    20,373,280                    21,396,939                    22,609,380                    23,960,496
leoparedes20 ARG                      6,447,135                      7,061,866                      7,864,140                      8,667,459
tucucorrea ARG                      2,899,619                      3,087,486                      3,335,443                      3,511,704
locelsogiovani ARG                      2,553,374                      2,684,097                      2,854,475                      2,991,682
emi_martinez26 ARG                          9,437,323                    10,751,922

After the World Cup, Kylian Mbappe gained 5.1M followers (6.5% growth), Leo Messi gained 7.6M followers (1.9% growth), and Angel Di Maria gained 1M followers (5% growth).

The chart below shows how each player grew on Instagram over the 4 days. Click into the legend to select a specific player and see how their Instagram following grew:

The chart below shows how many Instagram followers each player gained after the World Cup:

Summarizing

As we can observe, the World Cup led to a significant surge in Instagram followers for the players. With all players from both sides totalling 622.4M followers on the platform after the final game (665M on Jan 14 2023), there is no doubting that social media is a powerful medium in launching someone into the spotlight. 

All of the above visualizations were created with the Databar platform. Sign up here to get access.

View all APIs on Databar >>

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