How federations, teams and players harnessed the power of social media at the FIFA Women’s World Cup
By Ella Jerman, Social Media Manager / Consultant at Ten Toes
There’s no doubt that the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup was the biggest and best ever.
It was the first edition of the tournament to be played with an expanded 32-team field and it proved to be the most competitive we’ve ever seen, with the likes of Morocco and Philippines picking up their first-ever victories, four-time champions USA crashing out in the Round of 16 and Spain winning the title for the first time.
It was the most attended Women’s World Cup in history and with broadcast viewership records being broken across the globe, it’s clear the success of the tournament has been felt off the field too.
But what else stood out for me? The way that teams, players, leagues and clubs have been harnessing the power of social media to bring more eyes to women’s football than ever before.
THE MATILDAS EFFECT
Despite not medalling, one nation in particular experienced women’s football mania like never before: Australia.
The co-hosts of the tournament had an incredible journey to the final four, seeing 11.15 million people — 43% of the total population — tune in to see them face England in the semi-finals.
In a month where we saw Australia utterly mesmerized by women’s football, it was fascinating to see how the Matildas digital team capitalised on the opportunity.
Their social media channels were one of the standouts of the competing teams, with the range of behind-the-scenes material helping Matildas fans — both new and old — connect better to the nation’s newfound heroes.
The Matildas had a particularly strong strategy on TikTok, sharing behind-the-scenes content of the players on this channel in a uniquely authentic way.
Their page is filled with light-hearted fun between the players through the #AskMatildas series, where players were asked fan questions via a mini mic during the tournament — ranging from who is the biggest whinger on the team to why Mary Fowler always wears gloves.
These edits give followers raw access into the personalities of the players and ultimately, allows everyone to have a little bit of fun with social. At the end of the day, that’s why we all use it, right?
It wasn't just on TikTok where the Matildas cut through the noise. Being the host nation allows you to increase resources on your content production team — which the Matildas of course used to their advantage. They produced multiple compilation edits from Fan Festivals across the country to really encapsulate the enthusiasm generated for the team.
These tactics, along with stylised hype videos, well executed graphics, and maybe my favourite tactic of them all — adding songs synonymous with the team to the line-up videos — helped the Matildas achieve incredible results. On Instagram alone, their account following grew from just under 200,000 in mid-July to 664,000 by the end of the World Cup — almost twice as big as the Socceroos.
So where does Australia go from here? The Liberty A-League — the top-tier domestic women’s football league in Australia — starts in mid-October, while the Matildas are back in action later that month for Olympic qualifying. I’ll be fascinated to see how their content strategies develop to maintain the clear upward momentum of the women’s game.
LOOKING BEYOND AUSTRALIA: HOW FEDERATIONS, LEAGUES AND PLAYERS USED THE WORLD CUP TO BUILD STRONGER CONNECTIONS THROUGH SOCIAL
It goes without saying that there has been significant growth in women’s football worldwide since the 2019 World Cup — as well as an increased appreciation for the role social media has played in boosting awareness of the game.
After Spain were crowned FIFA Women’s World Cup champions on Sunday, data released by X revealed that over half a million unique authors engaged on the platform during the final, with 27,000 posts per minute being sent after the final whistle.
In years gone by, coverage of the Women’s World Cup could be hard to come by — but not anymore, with teams, players, leagues and brands around the world all harnessing the power of digital to engage their own audiences.
They may have fallen at the final hurdle, but the Lionesses’ social media content has continued to excel. After the success of Lions’ Den and Lionesses Live, England continued with the daily show format via Lionesses Down Under — bringing fans exclusive content with players throughout the whole tournament. With a tournament being held so far away, in a completely different timezone, this access is particularly important to help fans feel connected to the players, and gain an insight into their life in camp in Australia.
Meanwhile, other teams such as Sweden and South Africa proved the value in bringing fans raw, unfiltered content — often shot on a mobile — to easily foster a closer connection between the team and its supporters watching on at home.
True Believers! 🥳🥳🥳#SWE | #FIFAWWC pic.twitter.com/s2Cau62a0K
— Svensk Fotboll (@svenskfotboll) August 19, 2023
A particularly interesting development has been players curating their own social media content more than ever before. From Georgia Stanway and Ellie Roebuck making separate Instagram accounts to share behind-the-scenes content from the Lionesses camp, to Australia’s Charli Grant becoming renowned for her funny TikTok content, there is a clear willingness amongst women’s players to engage with their online communities.
This is something we’ve been able to do to great effect with Sweden’s Fridolina Rolfö – one of our clients here at Ten Toes. Analysing Fridolina’s past content, there’s a clear trend around high-performance for self-shot video content in the dressing room. We built this into our tournament strategy for Fridolina, sharing clips of her and teammates enjoying pizza and beer after their third-place finish as well as other celebrations post-match. The results? More than 5.4m views and an increase of 52,000 followers on the platform.
Elsewhere during the tournament, we’ve worked to ensure consistent posting that is on-strategy for Ten Toes’ client, Alessia Russo. This, combined with her performances out in Australia, has seen one of the biggest follower spikes among players in the Lionesses squad, with over 166,000 new followers.
But away from the competing teams and players, who else helped increase visibility of the FIFA Women’s World Cup?
For domestic clubs and leagues, having a defined content strategy for major tournaments is really important and sees them own a slice of the conversation.
Before the tournament began, we saw the Barclays Women’s Super League and National Women’s Soccer League — the two most represented domestic women’s leagues at the World Cup — produce bespoke content with their players to preview the competition.
And we’ve also seen league accounts react accordingly to promote their players when they’ve had a standout moment on the world stage.
It will be interesting to see how domestic leagues and clubs continue to channel this momentum between the end of the World Cup and the beginning of their own competitions.. As men’s and women’s domestic football seasons return and with men’s rugby and cricket world cups also looming, finding a way to stand out in the sports social media landscape will be key.
HOW DID FIFA OWN THE MOMENT?
We can’t look back at the social media success stories of the tournament without looking at the organisers themselves: FIFA.
Covering a World Cup on social media for FIFA is no small feat and requires months of advance planning to get it right. How do you give equal prominence to all competing teams? How do you keep all your stakeholders happy? What content is right for which platform? And let’s not think about the graphics that are prepared for every eventuality, many of which never see the light of day.
In spite of all of these challenges, FIFA excelled in their content across their multitude of social media platforms, primarily the FIFA Women’s World Cup and the FIFA World Cup accounts on TikTok, Instagram, X, Facebook — and even Threads, Instagram’s rival app to Twitter which launched on the brink of the tournament starting.
The FIFA Women’s World Cup and FIFA World Cup accounts worked in tandem throughout the tournament, helping to surface more women’s football content to the 40m+ followers on the men’s competition account. This helped the FIFA Women’s World Cup Instagram channel grow by over 500,000 followers from the beginning of July to the end of the competition.
And if we’re looking at how the game has evolved since 2019, FIFA’s exclusive partnership with TikTok is also worth mentioning here. The two joined forces ahead of the tournament to offer tailored content from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, including behind-the-scenes moments, team arrivals, live pre-match content, match highlights, player and coach reactions and much more.
The result? The account grew by more than 100% in followers, and the #FIFAWWC hashtag ended the tournament with more than three and a half billion views.
Acknowledging the tournament’s legacy and impact off the pitch was also important for FIFA — and that’s where we came in.
We’ve been working with FIFA for almost three years now, supporting them on social strategy and helping them manage corporate channels like their newly launched Instagram account, @fifa. During the tournament, we worked on various pieces of content which took a deeper dive into the development of women’s football and FIFA’s role within that.
PERSONAL TAKEAWAYS / SUMMARY
There are many takeaways from the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, but one thing is for certain: the power of women’s sport can no longer be underestimated.
Major tournaments have proved particularly defining for the women’s game. We saw how the Lionesses’ Euros win hugely accelerated progress in England in 2022 and at this year’s Women’s World Cup, we saw how co-hosts Australia brought together the nation like never before.
Throughout the tournament, I stumbled across multiple videos on social media from fans around the world too. From Colombia fans celebrating their historic run on the streets of Sydney to Philippines fans going crazy for their first-ever World Cup win in Manila, it’s clear that the appetite for women’s football worldwide is growing — and fast.
However, huge untapped potential still remains. For women’s football to continue to prosper, it’s vital that sports federations, clubs, leagues and players continue to connect with their new and existing audiences in between major tournaments. Whether that be through a player having their own defined strategy to deliver unique and authentic content, or a team maximising the potential of their own squad of talent.
At Ten Toes, our work with women’s sports stars such as Alessia Russo and Fridolina Rolfö, as well as leading clubs and federations across the women’s game, means we are well placed to unlock these opportunities.