If you thought that sport was just a distraction for most people, an unimportant flight of fancy for the free time between work and more important social adventures, then you’ve just been proven wrong.

It seems that football – and I do mean football – is perhaps the world’s favourite pastime,

The other day we found out that 165m Instagram accounts follow at least one sports account, and that 103m accounts are fans of football.

Brandan Gayle, head of global sports partnerships w Instagram, says 103M users are fans of global football. #Leaders16 pic.twitter.com/M07rAUPeyD

— Bart Wiley (@bartwiley) October 5, 2016

We already know that football is huge – have a look at Twitter when there’s any sort of breaking football news and see what comes onto your newsfeed. Just the other day, for example, one of the trending topics in London was the announcement that Micky Mellon had become the new manager of non-league Tranmere Rovers. As interesting as that news might be to Tranmere fans, it doesn’t sound like the kind of big news that often breaks on Twitter. It shows you the power of football.

And according to content marketing agency Fractl, who have researched the most shared online articles over the first six months of 2016, it’s football website Goal who come out on top.
http://www.frac.tl/research/threebillionshares

In one way, that makes sense – Goal is available in multiple different languages, and boasts editions of its website tailored to multiple different nations around the world. So in that sense, their catchment audience is far greater than most other publishers – they are a truly global brand.

But in another way it is majorly impressive.

The research shows that Goal is ahead of the likes of the BBC, Buzzfeed and Yahoo as the most shared online publisher in the world. That’s big news – especially as Goal focuses only on football.

With over 240m shares – mostly on Facebook – Goal is right at the top of the list, and it just proves the power of sport on social media. It’s not just a distraction for a lot of people, it’s one of their main areas of interest.

If Goal can outdo every other online publisher just by providing football content then it shows sport’s hold on the rest of the world. But it also shows how broadening your reach into different languages and different regions of the world matters – Goal isn’t just available in different regions, it is tailored to different regions of the world.

When it comes to social media, sport is once again the most popular!