Denver Broncos Case Study

Looking to capture more of the attention of their fan base, the team’s digital media team chose Rival IQ and successfully grew their social media following and engagement.

The competitive nature of the National Football League is not limited to the playing field. While the players battle on Sundays, the front office staff are in a 24/7 competition to attract and keep the attention of fans. The difficulty lay in the overwhelming number of media sources where their fans can go for information about the team. With so many options for fans to follow the team, the Denver Broncos realized that developing a strong social media presence was crucial part of fan engagement.

Building a greater following and engagement meant competing against many well-known local and national sports news sources. “We want to be the answer to the question, ‘Where do you want to get your news about the Broncos?’” said Ben Hunt, director of digital media at the Denver Broncos.

The team first wanted a better understanding of other NFL teams as well as local and national press, and bloggers, which required better tracking and measuring—their current methods were highly manual and time-consuming. After reviewing and testing several tools, they selected Rival IQ for its ability to track and measure content—beyond mere numbers and sentiment.

The Broncos social media team evaluated multiple social media analytics tools, and tested all of them for six months. They concluded that Rival IQ provided the strongest tracking and content performance measurement, helping them get a view of the social media landscape by monitoring their own performance, gaining insights into what content is most effective and understanding the varied competing news sources.

Now regarded as one of the leaders in social media among their peers in the NFL, the Broncos’ reach has grown to more than 7 million followers—a 43.8% increase since they started with Rival IQ. Because Rival IQ brings the data to them, the Broncos’ social media team has time to spend on higher value activities. “Rival IQ saves us time because all the information we need is in one spot,” said Hunt. “Plus, it is very easy to use. The interface is much simpler than competitive products while still giving us the ability to do everything we need to do.”

Key to their social media tracking and planning process is the ease of search. “Rival IQ is one place we go to get everything done for tracking,” Hunt explained. “It’s helping us plan our content and react quickly to what’s trending.”

Hunt especially values email updates, which save time: “We receive reports multiple times per day on what is happening in the market. We no longer have to look up all that information manually, using multiple tools.”

Using Rival IQ, the digital media team has been strategically working to further grow its presence and engagement. In addition to informing the team’s social content strategy, Rival IQ has also helped them identify the team’s best time of day and how to better leverage trending hashtags. “Rival IQ gives us a great, detailed view of the landscape of where our fans go to find out about the team, and has been critical in helping us make gains in audience engagement.”