How the Swiss national soccer team performs on social media

Based on the Gampaygn platform from Ykone, Gamned has conducted an analysis of the performances of the Swiss national team footballers on Instagram. The tool has more than eleven million influencers on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube or Tiktok in its database and analyzes almost 50,000 posts every day. "This allows Gamned to identify and analyze influencer performances in real time on social media," says Pierre Berendes, CEO of Gamned. "Our study shows the most popular players on social media, those who engage the most with their fan base, the countries where the fans come from and also the value of the posts of these players," he adds.

Top 10 most popular players

Not surprisingly, the team's two stars, Shaqiri and Xhaka, have a combined 4.6 million fans. Together, they are twice as popular as any of the other 24 players on the team. The player with the smallest fan base is Eray Cömert. He has not yet reached the limit of 10,000 fans.

Who has the more engaged community?

When it comes to influencer marketing, the engagement rate can evaluate the quality of the influencer community. So the size of the community alone does not allow for a proper assessment of an influencer's value. With the explosion of follower-buying practices (fake followers), it is the engagement rate that determines the credibility of an influencer.

Big influencers like Shaqiri and Xhaka have an engagement rate of 3.6 percent, which is very good considering the size of their community. By comparison, Ronaldo has a rate of 2 percent and Neymar has a rate of 1.35 percent. Players with a community between 10,000 and 25,000 fans have the best engagement rates. Wolfsburg's Rubén Vargas has the highest engagement rate at almost 20 percent, followed by Jonas Omlin and Christian Fassnacht.

Where do the fans come from?

Most of the fan base is outside Switzerland. Only four players have more than half of their fans in Switzerland: Fassnacht, Lotomba, Omeragic and Cömert. They all play or played until recently in the Super League, the national championship.

Jordan Lotomba left Young Boys for Nice in the summer of 2020. In contrast, Ricardo Rodriguez, Xherdan Shaqiri, and Granit Xhaka bring up the rear in terms of the percentage of Swiss players in their fan base. That's because these players play for top European clubs - Inter, AC Milan, Bayern, Arsenal, Liverpool, etc. - and they're all Swiss.

Why are most of the players' fans outside of Switzerland? That's because it's mainly club fans who follow the Nati players on Instagram. The two Bundesliga players Nico Elvedi and Denis Zakaria, for example, have more than 40 percent of their fans in Germany.

The English follow five players who play or have played in their home league: Fabian Schär (Newcastle), Edimilson Fernandes (ex-West Ham), Kevin Mbabu (Newcastle) and Shaqiri (Liverpool) and Xhaka (Arsenal).

The Italians are particularly interested in Remo Freuler (Atalanta), Ricardo Rodriguez (Torino) and Silvan Widmer (formerly of Udinese).

Benfica striker Haris Seferovic, on the other hand, has more than 50 percent Portuguese followers. Mario Gavranovic, who plays for Dinamo Zagreb and also has Croatian citizenship, also has a following of over 46 percent in Croatia.

Are the Swiss players worth their weight in gold?

If every player on the team posts on Instagram, it's likely to reach 1.4 million people and generate 350,000 interactions. This corresponds to a media equivalent of more than 300,000 francs. On an individual level, a post by Xhaka on Instagram is valued at 90,000 francs, compared to 100,000 francs for Shaqiri and 17,000 francs for Seferovic or Sommer.

Players like Edimilson Fernandes, Silvan Widmer, Eray Cömert or Jordan Lotomba would only earn a little over 1,000 francs per post. That's still a long way from the millions for a post by Ronaldo or Neymar.