Beyond the Pitch: Euro 2024’s Digital Domination

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With the 2024 Euros kickoff on the 7th of June with the first match taking place between Germany vs Scotland. 

But while millions will be watching the games on the pitch, we’ll also be analysing the action happening off the field – in the digital world.

This year, we’re launching the Euro 2024 Digital Domination Tracker, a comprehensive analysis of how each nation is utilising social media, websites, and other online platforms to engage with fans and build their digital presence. We’ll be using a broad spectrum of metrics, including follower counts, engagement rates, website traffic, and more, to determine which country not only dominates the pitch, but also crushes it online!

Let the Digital Battle kick off!

How Does This Help? 

Well if you’re anything like us, you’re a nerd for all things digital. We genuinely find this data exciting and surprising in some cases. Many of these nations have a huge potential to capture large demographics of audiences, but they aren’t putting enough focus into growing their digital presence. 

You’ll also find it an interesting case study of how Google’s recent helpful update, as of March 2024, has impacted the website performance of these official domains causing massive nose dives in website traffic and causing a knock-on effect for domain ratings. 

We’ll also cover which nations are capitalising on growing platforms like TikTok, and which nations have failed to keep up with trending platforms and modern consumption habits. At the end of this article, we have announced the overall winners – for which we have created our very own ranking system for! It’s a lot to get through so let’s kick it off. 

The Competitors

The competitors for our Digital Domination Euro Tracker include the 24 nations that have made it to the group stages. Check them out below:

1. England 
2. Germany
3. Scotland 
4. Hungary
5. Switzerland
6. Spain
7. Croatia
8. Italy
9. Albania
10. Slovenia
11. Denmark
12. Serbia
13. Poland
14. Netherlands
15. Austria
16. France
17. Belgium
18. Slovakia
19. Romania
20. Ukraine
21. Turkey
22. Georgia
23. Portugal
24. Czech Republic

Each nation will be judged using the same available data. All data collected is accurate and correct as of May/June 2024. 

Facebook Digital Presence Analysis

We have used 2 sets of values for this analysis – Followers and Likes. Arguably, followers have more merit than likes because they indicate a higher level of engagement and interest in a Facebook page’s content. 

Followers actively choose to receive updates and are more likely to see the page’s posts in their news feed regularly, reflecting a greater commitment to the page. In contrast, page likes show initial support or interest but do not guarantee consistent visibility of the page’s posts.

Facebook Followers Analysis 

At a glance, it’s clear to see that England is the front winner for followers, followed by France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Poland – all of which have managed to secure at least one million followers. The remaining 18 nations struggle to hit that 1M mark. 

Facebook Likes Analysis 

The data below shows how many Facebook likes each nation’s page has received. Again, England is the frontline winner, and the nations of Germany, Portugal, Spain and Poland have managed to reappear in the top 5. 

However, one surprising metric here is that France, which was second in Facebook Followers, does not have Facebook likes listed. The reason jumping to mind is that they simply haven’t turned the feature on in their page settings – which for any marketer is an immediate red card!

Several other countries also commit this foul including Turkey, Netherlands and Slovenia, which isn’t ideal in terms of digital performance as they are losing out on gathering important data.

Importance of Facebook in Digital Marketing

In Europe alone, Facebook has approximately 408 million monthly active users. It’s massive for digital marketing efforts and remains one of the most popular platforms on the continent. However, there are shifting trends in that the platform is struggling to retain younger demographics, with other platforms challenging the site’s monopoly in social media domination. 

Will Facebook Reign Forever?

This becomes apparent when we look at Facebook vs Instagram data for this report. The example below shows that Italy, which has 251K followers on Facebook, has 5.9M followers on Instagram. That’s 23 times the number of followers – which indicates a massive shift as to where people are spending their online time. Luckily for the Meta, however, they own both Facebook and Instagram, so they won’t cry about it for too long! 

Instagram Digital Presence Analysis

For the Instagram analysis, we’ll look at both the amount of followers and the typical engagement rate for each nation’s official football account. The engagement rates in particular will indicate the quality of their online content and how their audiences are valuing their social media presence. 

Instagram Followers Analysis 

Portugal takes the win on this one, leading the way with over 17.1M Instagram followers. We again see the familiar faces of France, England Germany, Italy and Spain among the leading positions. 

To further highlight the point mentioned in the above Facebook analysis, the amount of followers in the top ten positions of Instagram amounts to 65.2 million followers, whereas on Facebook it amounts to 17.27 million followers. 

So it begs the question of whether or not Facebook is equal value to Instagram – in the context of your own digital marketing initiatives, should you pay more attention to Instagram because that’s where the people are? Our guess – maybe you should – particularly if you’re appealing to younger audiences as part of your digital strategy. 

Instagram Engagement Analysis 

However, Instagram followers are not the only important metric for measuring success on the platform. You also need to think about engagement rates in order to determine the quality of content and what your audiences like to interact with. 

These engagement rates listed below flip the previous winning nations on their heads. The top five do not have any of the typical leaders of France, Portugal, Italy, etc., despite their massive followings. Instead, it’s Slovenia that shoots into first place with an impressive engagement rate of 2.60%, followed by Serbia, Hungary, Switzerland and Austria. 

Another amazing stat that emerges here is Portugal – which holds the top position of Instagram followers at 17.1 million but is at the bottom of the pile for engagement rate at only 0.22%. 

Impact of Followers on Engagement 

What is the lesson here? More followers will not equal more engagement. Online content still needs to be interesting and effectively appeal to target audiences. Take the example below; Germany, which has less than 2.5x times the followers of Portugal, still boasts nearly 15,000 more likes per post on average. This is evidence of the above point, in that more followers will not always equal better engagement. 

Twitter/X Digital Presence Analysis

This dataset lists the number of Twitter followers per competing nation. France (6.3M) and England (6.2M) lead the chart with the highest number of followers, indicating a strong social media presence on the platform. 

Nations like Austria (61.9K), Czech Republic (54.8K), Romania (47.3K), Albania (25K), Slovenia (23.4K), Ukraine (21.1K), Georgia (11K), and Slovakia (7.539K) are at the lower end of the spectrum. These numbers indicate a limited reach and possibly less influence or engagement on Twitter/X.

It’s important to note that for this analysis, countries with larger populations and more widely spoken languages (like French, English, and German) tend to have higher follower counts. However, the social media strategy for each nation also has a massive impact on creating an engaged user base, and as such shouldn’t be discarded in the analysis of engagement.

How Important is Twitter/X for Digital Presence? 

The social media platform X, formally known as Twitter, has taken some PR hits in recent years, including the drama surrounding its rebrand after Elon Musk bought the platform. According to StatCounter, only 3.59% of internet users use the social media, which isn’t much when you compare it to Instagram, which has twice that number of European users (7.61%).

In terms of digital presence, however, you still want to have the platform in your toolkit, the reason being that audiences almost expect it as part of your online identity, without it you also risk capturing audiences who still value the good ol’ days of Twitter. Although X has seen a 15% decline in global daily active users – it’s still worth having for the time being. 

TikTok Digital Presence Analysis

TikTok reports an average of 134 million European users per month. The video-sharing platform has quickly risen in popularity, experiencing significant growth during the COVID-19 period – which has proven not to be a passing fad.

Nations that are currently attracting a popular following on TikTok could arguably be praised for their ability to pivot their digital strategies – ensuring that they have remained aligned with trending consumption habits. 

In this analysis, we examine TikTok follower counts, total likes, and the quality of video content across various European official football accounts. These metrics provide insights into the platform’s engagement and the success of users in capturing and maintaining audience interest.

TikTok Followers

For every metric we have analysed so far, it mainly appears to be a contest between England and France – who both have managed to compete in the top 3 positions for at least one metric per category. TikTok is no different, but this time it’s France leading the way with 3.4 million more followers than England. 

One competitor we haven’t seen in the top rankings yet is Belgium, however, on TikTok they fall at position 4 for the most followers (1.9M) and at position 5 for the most likes (16.5M), coming before the likes of Spain, Italy and Germany. 

Arguably, this shows how the TikTok platform allows for smaller accounts to gain global attraction, something which has also been observed at a small business level – who have shared ins similar successes. 

TikTok Likes

‘TikTok Likes’ accumulates all of the total likes the account has gathered on each video, which is why the data here is significantly higher than the follower counts. Again, France tops the board for this digital presence metric with over 198.4 million likes.

The reason for this is arguably the quality of the content, which when you look at France’s profile appears to capitalise on international football celebrities like Mbappe. Their pinned post (and most popular with 47.6M views) features the footballer answering questions about himself. 

So it begs the question if if one was posted for Harry Kane would it generate similar engagement results? 

Is TikTok Necessary for Digital Marketing?

In short, TikTok is necessary if that’s where your audience is. 

When you look at the number of users per country – France (21M) and England (23M) it’s clear to see why both nations have made an obvious and successful attempt to jump on board with local consumption habits. 

However, one thing to point out is that not all TikTok traffic will come from local audiences, especially given the reputation of famous players e.g.) England’s Harry Kane, France’s  Mbappe, and Portugal’s Ronaldo. So arguably, the nations with famous footballers should receive a spike in global attention. 

This at least appears to be the case for TikTok – especially when you look at Portugal data which as a nation, only has 3.3 million active TikTok users, yet it is in position 3 for both followers and likes.

YouTube Digital Presence Analysis

An estimated 19.75% of Europeans are YouTube users, which is a significant part of the population. In digital presence terms, it is a goldmine if you can manage to gather a loyal subscriber base, as the engagement levels tend to be way longer than other social media platforms. For this analysis, we look at both the subscriber base for each nation, to see how popular they are, and the amount of views on their most popular YouTube video.

YouTube Subscribers

One theme that keeps reappearing in this analysis, is whether or not the population of a country (and its percentage of engaged YouTube users), has an impact on the amount of YouTube subscribers for each nation’s official football channel.

Judging by the data it does, but it does not mean an absolute certainty for the subscriber base. Take for example the UK, which reportedly has 56.2M YouTube users, (falling 3rd in European YouTube usage) yet it has taken 1st place for this analysis and is very closely followed by France. 

Germany has the highest portion of YouTube users (67.8M) followed by Turkey (57.5M) yet these nations come in at position 4 and 7 in the rankings above. So the population of YouTube users obviously does have an effect but is not a guarantee for securing success on YouTube.

YouTube Views

France takes the edge in this category, with a staggering 28M views on their most popular YouTube video. This video shares backstage content of the French team preparing for their final World Cup match in 2018 against Croatia. This video has garnered more than double the number of views on England’s most popular video which only has 11M.

However, the data does not account for when the video was posted. France’s video was posted in January 2019 whereas England’s most recent video was posted in March 2024. So given a little more time, this could quite easily change. 

One thing common in both videos however is that they depict key events, whether it’s the World Cup or in England’s case the famous Lukaku assist that took place in the recent match between England vs. Belgium match. 

How Important are YouTube Subscribers? 

The overall number of YouTube subscribers, for each nation, tends to be much less compared to the other social platforms mentioned above. One could argue that this is due to the consumption habits of each nation, or the fact that a subscription to a YouTube subscription is much more of a commitment compared to other socials. 

In either case, subscribers are most definitely important in terms of digital presence. YouTube SEO is more popular than ever, and arguably having 1000 dedicated audiences who are watching 30mins of your video content, could be of more value than 10,000 who only engage for a few seconds. Ultimately, it depends on your digital marketing goals, but we always advocate for quality long-term engagement over brief brand interactions. 

Website Digital Presence Analysis 

An established website presence is the cornerstone of any online marketing strategy. It’s the brand’s digital home and in terms of national football teams, it’s key for eCommerce, ie.) match tickets, jerseys, kits and other branded merchandise. 

For this website analysis, we will take a look at typical website performance metrics, including; monthly website traffic, keywords, backlinks and the recent impact of Google’s Core Update in March 2024, which saw some national team websites lose out on thousands of website traffic. 

It’s a lot to get into so here we go. 

Google Core Update, March 2024

The Google Core update of March 2024 was a significant event for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This update had several key features that impacted search results. Firstly, it focused on content quality, aiming to prioritise high-quality content over low-quality (often it was AI-generated content that was deemed unhelpful to users). The impact of this update was substantial, reducing unhelpful content in search results by up to 45%. Let’s take a look at how this impacted national teams and their official website performance. 

Website Traffic Analysis

At a glance, we can see that Turkey (8.8M) users have the highest proportion of average monthly traffic. It has more than double the traffic of the runner–up, Germany, which averages around 3.8M monthly visitors. 

Surprisingly Switzerland, which was doing relatively well on Instagram engagement metrics (2.19%) and TikTok followers (639K), falls to the bottom three in terms of website traffic. This could indicate that they are not making the best use of their social media engagement, in that they could convert social media users to website browsers – either by promoting the links via content or by embedding CTAs into their posts. 

Google Core Update Impact on Traffic Analysis

The Google Core Update in March 2024 had a major impact on some of the National teams’ official websites. The table below shows the impact it caused on average traffic; listing the top three beneficiaries and the three nations most negatively impacted. 

The top beneficiary of this update was England, which gained a massive 71.6% increase in website traffic, followed by Germany (+45.5%) and Turkey (+5.35%). This update evidently caused these nations to rise to the top 5 for website traffic performance. 

Unfortunately, some nations were also negatively impacted, for example, Spain (- 4.09%), Slovakia (-15.47%) and the worst affected, Netherlands (-18.13%). The reasoning behind this decrease could be due to content quality, backlink analysis, spam policies or something else entirely. 

Keywords Analysis 

The amount of keywords a website is ranking for is another important metric to consider for performance analysis. The table below shows the ranking nations, with Germany topping the board at 222,000 ranking keywords. 

Switzerland is again bottoming the board with only 1300 ranking keywords and surprisingly Portugal, finds itself in the bottom half with only 11200 keywords – a major drop when you compare that to their Instagram statistics. 

England National Team Website Metrics – A relatively new website! According to Ahrefs

English National Team Website Metrics – According to SEMrush

Google Core Update Impact on Keywords

The Google core update also had a major impact on ranking keywords, but perhaps not in the negative sense you might initially think of. Take for example Germany, which was the worst-affected nation for losing 14.7% of its keywords, however, they still lead the board compared to other nations in terms of overall ranking keywords. 

The biggest beneficiaries of this core update were Croatia (+17.62%), England (+7.25%.), and Turkey (+5.4%), which could arguably be the reason why they have each secured a spot in the top 10 for average website traffic. 

Backlink Analysis 

Backlinks are important for improving your website’s Domain Rating or Authority Score. Essentially, they refer to how many other websites out there are linking back to your website. However, it’s not just about the number of backlinks, it is also about the quality of them, as spam backlinks can end up doing more harm than good. In any case, here are the competing websites and the amount of backlinks each official website has to date. 

Poland (30.2M) dominates this performance metric, with over 2x the number of backlinks as Belgium (13M) and Germany (13M). The most surprising stat has to be Portgual, which despite its global popularity, existing social media success and famous players like Christiano Ronaldo, only has 350 backlinks to date.  

Google Core Update Impact on Backlinks

Only two nations were negatively impacted by the Google Core update, England (-1M) and Croatia (-40.4K). 

However, as mentioned earlier this does not necessarily mean a reduction in performance, in fact, losing these backlinks could have propelled the website’s overall performance as they are getting rid of low-value backlinks, and competing in other (and perhaps more worthy) metrics such as keywords and traffic. 

Overall, the Google Core Update had a massive impact on website performance, for some Nations, it was positive, whilst for others, it was dramatically negative. We also saw some previous Nations, who were dominating in social media presence, drop the ball when it came to website performance – which will have an obvious impact on the Digital Euro Winners, coming next. 

Greman National Football Website Metrics – According to SEMrush

German National Football Website Metrics – According to Ahrefs

Digital Presence Euro Winners 2024

In order to determine the winners and losers of the Euro 24 Digital Games, we have taken into consideration the 12 digital performance metrics discussed above and listed below, these include; 

1. Website Traffic
2. Website Backlinks 
3. Website Keywords
4. Facebook Followers
5. Facebook Likes
6. Instagram Followers
7. Instagram Engagement
8. Twitter Followers
9. Most Popular YouTube Video in Views
10. Youtube Subscribers 
11. TikTok Followers
12. TikTok Likes

The scoring system uses the following method; 

1. Normalise Each Metric: This is done by dividing each nation’s value for a given metric by the highest value recorded for that metric across all nations. This process ensures that the metrics are on a comparable scale.
2. Apply Assigned Weights: After normalisation, we multiply each normalised value by the assigned weight for its respective metric. This step accounts for the relative importance of each metric in the overall analysis.
3. Calculate Final Scores: We will sum the weighted scores for each nation to determine their final score. This aggregated score represents the composite performance of each nation based on the given metrics.
4. Rank the Nations: Finally, we rank the nations based on their final scores, ordering them from highest to lowest. This ranking will indicate the relative standing of each nation in the competition.

This method provides the fairest basis for obtaining a clear and objective ranking of each nation’s digital presence, reflecting their performance across all considered metrics.

And the winners are…

Based on the scoring system, the winners of this year’s Digital Euros are….Turkey! 

This impressive achievement is even more worthy when considering that their national football team does not have an official Facebook account! Showcasing how the strength of their website presence, YouTube and Instagram has been enough to propel them towards success. 

Germany is a close second followed by England, France and Poland – who are all worthy competitors and have individually made an impressive effort to dominate their online presence. The table below shows the full list of Nations and their place in the Digital Euros. 

Despite having some success in key performance metrics, nations such as Switzerland, Denmark and Hungary still failed to make a strong impact on their overall digital presence, and as such fell to the bottom of the Digital Presence Euro winners.

Turkish Football Team Website Metrics – According to SEMrush

Turkish Football Nations Websites Metrics – According to Ahrefs

Digital Presence: Key Takeaways

Despite these official accounts having the backing of big budgets, populations and global events, it’s interesting to see that many make the same typical mistakes that the everyday marketer can also make. 

For example, Portugal which was in the top positions for Instagram and Facebook performance metrics, failed to transfer that success onto their official website presence – a major missed opportunity which could have seen them secure a position much higher than 8. 

It’s also worth pointing out that the data revealed instances where more followers didn’t necessarily equal more engagement. Indicating that the quality of content is more impactful than nations may initially think. Content that appeared to do particularly well was content that depicted key football moments and celebrity footballer engagement. 

This report should serve as a cautionary tale for those managing social media accounts, business websites and digital engagement. A big budget does not always mean guaranteed success, and digital marketers now need to be more savvy in how they reach audiences as opposed to mistargeted strategies that do not deliver a return on investment. 

According to Ciaran Connolly, ProfileTree founder, “The Euro 24 Digital Domination Tracker showcase the immense potential for national football teams to engage with their global fan base through strategic digital marketing. Since we have been building digital brands in ProfileTree since 2011, we have seen firsthand how a strong online presence can drive brand loyalty, monetisation, and long-term success. This analysis not only highlights the winners and losers in the digital arena but also serves as a valuable lesson for organisations across all industries. By understanding your audience, creating compelling content, and continuously adapting to new platforms and trends, you can build a powerful digital presence that sets you apart from the competition.“

If you enjoyed this article, why not check out the; Top 10 Instagram Accounts with the Most-Followers or Who Has The Most Followers on Facebook?.