Social Media Analytics, 2025 Edition

I’m still digging out from the NACDA 2025 Conference, but I was able to finish a project I’ve been working on all month. Also I have our first collab in the college sports content space, which is exciting. And of course, college hockey. Today there’ll be:

• Social Media Report - I added up the followers of every school across every social platform

• Mascot weddings - our first collab with someone else explores the cost of mascot wedding appearances

• College hockey - looking to see who grew revenue the most from FY2017 - 2024

Pour a drink. Get comfortable. Let’s get into it.

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Social Media Kings, Queens, and Jokers

One of the open ended questions post-House is how Deloitte, the accounting firm behind the NIL-Go Clearinghouse, will estimate a ‘range of compensation’ for third party NIL deals. Whose to say what is “fair” to pay a student athlete for an appearance, endorsement, autograph, or other service?

Anytime someone has to stick their neck out and try to say how it’ll happen, one consistent claim is the amount depends on the social media reach of the student athlete. The more followers an athlete has, the more the Clearinghouse will say he can earn.

Well, if you want potential athletes to have large social media followings, it may help to have… a large media following yourself.

Quick Takeaways:

• Ohio State claims the top spot, with 2 other B1G schools (Oregon/Michigan) also in the top 10. But credit to the SEC - 6 of the top 10 are theres (and 11 out of the top 25). Clemson at #10 as the top ACC school and Colorado (!) at #11 as the top Big 12 school is also notable. Boise State is the top G6 institution with 799k followers with Oregon State (781k) close behind.

• The disparity between the top B1G school (Ohio State with 7.2M) and bottom (Northwestern with 265k) is wild. Maybe having someone be Director of Marketing instead of a Chief Communications and Branding Officer helps?

• How many FCS schools do we think have more followers than any school in Conference USA or the MAC?

Analyst’s Desk

This data set was made… by hand. Exactly as you imagine. Going across all the social media accounts and writing down/adding up each school’s followers. To be more specific, I looked up if the athletic department itself as well as the football team had an account on each platform. Auburn University, for example, has the @AuburnTigers account with 491,000 followers and @FootballAU with 390k, both on Facebook. Both accounts were included. To be fair, I didn’t go through and add in mens/womens basketball accounts, which you could imagine could boost schools like UNC/Duke/Kentucky. I also didn’t just take ‘blue check’ accounts, but tried to, as best I could, find the ‘official’ account of each department/football team. It’s surprisingly hard to find some of these school’s accounts on some of these platforms, and many didn’t have both a department/football team on some platforms (especially YouTube).

Quick Takeaways:

• Unsurprisingly, the B1G and SEC are leading the way. It is striking just how much more expensive ($1500) Michigan State/Oregon are than anybody else. How is Ryan Day affording a championship team without charging more for Brutus to make an appearance?

• As the Sickos themselves noted, the Sun Belt Conference’s University of Louisiana at Monroe mascot, Ace the Warhawk, comes in at the lowest cost at $25 an hour. In the fight between reach and revenue we see in large conference media deals, ULM is highly in the reach side of the debate. I’m curious how much Ace is hitting the road throughout the year. Also should note ULM had the lowest # of followers in the first graph…

• Technically Georgia only allows half an hour appearances, but I estimated the full hour. They clearly have more important work to do than weddings.

Analyst’s Desk

The ways in which schools charge people for mascot appearances is all over the place. I suggest you read their article that shows some of these details and you can see the data I’ve used here. I assumed you’d want the mascot for 1 hour, were within 50 miles of campus, and would pay $25 for travel expenses.

Quick Takeaways:

• What strikes me is the notable decline in ticket sales for Minnesota. While they’ve always been seen as the top dog in Division I ice hockey, I wouldn’t have expected to see such a decline in ticket revenue.

• For all the hype Penn State’s ice hockey program gets, I also was surprised to see not only how much ticket revenue they make but that it has also been flat for 8 years.

• It’s hard to see all the schools on the bottom. What sticks out to me is UMass moving from $250k in FY17 to $921k in FY24.

• Conversely, Miami (OH) declined from $771k to $320k in that same timespan.

• Interesting to see the current champs (Western Michigan) down below $500k. College hockey is wild.

Analyst’s Desk

Clearly I have some work to do tracking down all the financial reports for public DI hockey programs. The MFRS forms are needed to get sport-specific data. This lets us see exactly how much the Men’s Hockey teams had in ticket sales (inflation adjusted).

📖 What I’m Reading/Listening To 🔉 

I’m always on the lookout for anyone breaking down college sports and especially the business side of the industry. Here’s this week’s best listens:

• NIL Clubhouse had nice run through of the possible lawsuits/loopholes that are out their in a post-House world..

• Split Zone Duo had a great interview with Extra Point’s Matt Brown that broke down the post-House world and what may be coming to college football.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading this week’s issue.

I reached out to the Sickos Committee hoping they’d let me run with it, and hats off to them because they let me. Never thought I’d get a chance to work with them, but here we are. Again, if you’re not subscribed to their newsletter, it’s worth your time.

Until next time,

Greg Chick, PhD

Data Analyst

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