The Aussie Olympian With The Biggest Social Media Profile Has Been Almost Absent From The News

The Aussie Olympian With The Biggest Social Media Profile Has Been Almost Absent From The News
B&T Magazine
Edited by B&T Magazine



The Australian Olympian taking the biggest social media profile to Tokyo is not one of our world-leading swimmers.

Nor is it Wimbledon champ Ash Barty, leading female footballer Sam Kerr or one of the many Boomers basketballers plying their trade in the NBA.

Instead, the title of Australia’s most prominent athlete on social media goes to skateboarder Shane O’Neill, according to research from media monitoring firm Streem who compared the Twitter and Instagram profiles of Australia’s Olympic team.

Despite appearing in just 49 distinct print and online media items in Australia in the past 12 months – compared to Barty’s 9300 – O’Neill is huge on Instagram, where he has amassed 1.4 million followers.

For context, that is more people than generally visit any individual Australian online news site on a daily basis.

The list sees recently added Olympic sports such as skateboarding, surfing and BMX – which have traditionally struggled for mainstream media attention – come into their own.

There’s no doubt athletes performing regularly on the global stage had a distinct advantage.  Eight basketballers, four surfers, three cyclists, two tennis players and a footballer made the cut, with swimmer Cameron McEvoy squeezing in at 20th after Alex De Minaur withdrew from Tokyo last week following a positive coronavirus test.

But they all fell behind skateboarding superstar O’Neill, whose videos of assorted tricks and stunts have attracted a huge audience.

The list contains six women and 14 men. The highest-ranked woman is surfer Sally Fitzgibbons, who is no. three overall.

A couple of notable omissions from Australia’s Olympics team – Ben Simmons (6.6m followers) or Nick Kyrgios (2.1m) – could have been number-one had they chosen to compete in Tokyo.

But even they would have been dwarfed by swimmer/musician (and one-time partner of Miley Cyrus) Cody Simpson, who failed to make the swim team despite a credible showing in the Olympic trials where he made the final for the 100m butterfly but finished last.

Simpson has more than 10 million fans across Twitter and Instagram.

Streem corporate affairs lead Conal Hanna said Instagram was the clear social network of choice for athletes.

“Instagram and Twitter are the two platforms that most athletes are using to engage with their fans, which is why we focused our analysis on them. “Of the two, Instagram is considerably more popular, with the top 20 Olympians racking up 8.6m followers there, compared to 2.5m on Twitter.”

Boomers captain and Australian flagbearer Patty Mills had the largest Twitter profile of any athlete with more than 400,000 followers.

Featured Image: Instagram/@shanejoneill




Please login with linkedin to comment

2020 Tokyo Olympics Games Streem

Latest News

Sydney Comedy Festival: Taking The City & Social Media By Storm
  • Media

Sydney Comedy Festival: Taking The City & Social Media By Storm

Sydney Comedy Festival 2024 is live and ready to rumble, showing the best of international and homegrown talent at a host of venues around town. As usual, it’s hot on the heels of its big sister, the giant that is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, picking up some acts as they continue on their own […]

Global Marketers Descend For AANA’s RESET For Growth
  • Advertising

Global Marketers Descend For AANA’s RESET For Growth

The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) has announced the final epic lineup of local and global marketing powerhouses for RESET for Growth 2024. Lead image: Josh Faulks, chief executive officer, AANA  Back in 2000, a woman with no business experience opened her first juice bar in Adelaide. The idea was brilliantly simple: make healthy […]