Over the last few months there seems to have been a marked shift in a trend towards Instagram for quite a lot of sport-related social media content.

Not only have we seen the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi attain tens of millions of new followers in 2017, but Ronaldo himself has some of the most-liked posts of the year of anyone on the platform, sharing the top ten with Selena Gomez and Beyonce. The rise of Instagram has been a common theme, but over the year, the platform has been attempting to grow in another area.

Well over a year ago now, Instagram launched the Stories feature allowing for a more real-time type of storytelling on the platform. By now, it is a well-established part of Instagram, but it’s starting to be used in more clever ways. And where the platform seemed to have Snapchat in its sights.

This week, a Forbes Business article took data from Nielsen and internal data from Snap itself in order to build a picture of the platform’s relationship with sport, finding that Snapchat users – a younger demographic to those on Instagram, overall – have a stronger relationship with sport and the sports leagues, events and teams they follow. In fact, they found that Snapchat users were even more likely to be fans of sport than anyone else.

But one interesting takeaway is the claim that, Snapchat users are more likely to use their social media platform of choice whilst actually attending events.

“Twice as many Snapchatters share photos of the game than non-Snapchatters do while at live sporting events, and they’re far more active on social media during games than non-Snapchatters who are there live as well” – Forbes Business

What’s interesting about that has to do with the storytelling nature of the Snapchat. Images of live events taken together tell the story of an experience in a way that most other mediums can’t.

Instagram’s use of Stories is based on a similar principle, but ultimately it might be better used by brands and sports teams who are updating fans who aren’t at events, whereas Snapchat tends to be less brand focused. Instagram, with its addition of polls, seems to be allowing users to drive the content of the social media producer who is at the event. And Bayern Munich’s recent use of Instagram Stories polls to take fans who couldn’t be at the stadium behind the scenes and direct the content themselves shows how an immersive medium like Instagram Stories or Snapchat can enhance matchdays.

The two, taken together, show that the importance placed on live experience in sport is just as important as ever. Snapchat users want to share the experience, whilst Instagram provides a space for clubs to bring fans from around the world into the fold.

They also show that the continued growth of Instagram is happening for a reason, and that experiences still matter, even a world where on-demand content and sport on TV seems to reign supreme.