Last year we covered the first Sport Social Media Index, compiled by the guys at Umpf in Leeds and ranked by a panel of four judges. The list covers 148 professional football, rugby and cricket teams in the UK and is the most comprehensive of its kind.

Last year it was Tottenham Hotspur who came out top with a score of 69.9 out of 100, with Chelsea and Leyton Orient following them up close behind.

This year it is Leicester City FC, who have climbed from 9th in last years report to being number 1. Displacing Spurs who sink to 96th in the overall table. 2nd place went to Leeds United and following them were Ipswich Town, Sheffield Wednesday, Leyton Orient and the highest place rugby club was Castleford Tigers in 6th overall.

Judges praised Leicester City for its varied content strategies optimised to encourage organic growth, high levels of cross-channel audience engagement and its ‘fleet-of-foot community management’.

Michael Sheehan, Head of Social Media at William Hill, said:

“It’s fantastic to see Leicester City climb from a very prominent 10th position in last year’s index to the top of the table in 2015.

“Leicester clearly understand the value of investing in social media and have demonstrated a clear ability to not only promote the club’s efforts on pitch, but also use social to listen to the needs and desires of their fans.

“This coupled with significant community growth year on year and excellent cross channel development, mean Leicester City truly deserve to be crowned this year’s winners.”

1. LEICESTER CITY FC

Newly-promoted Leicester City have truly made their mark on the sport social media landscape this year, climbing from 9th position in 2013 to the top of the table.

The club not only has a great breadth of social media channels – including official pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Vine and Google + – but shows a strong understanding of tailoring content to suit the platform on which it is hosted. It is clear that for Leicester, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to social media.

Judges acknowledged the significant level of audience growth over the course of the year, praising content strategies optimised to encourage organic growth and consistent use of hashtags.

The use of social media image watermarks to cross-promote Leicester’s other social channels was also praised by the panel, as was the club’s excellent in-match and pre-match reporting on Facebook.

Judges were also impressed by the high levels of cross-channel audience engagement and fleet-of-foot community management.

The full report and league tables can be found on http://www.sport.socialmediaindex.co.uk