New Leader On Top of our Yacht Racing Facebook Chart.

In the month when Facebook revealed that half a billion people used the social networking site on one day and that there were over 750 million active monthly accounts, the average growth of our monitored yacht racing brands was 9.7%. This was also the month that we discovered the page for Sperry Top-sider, which has 99K+ likes – almost 50,000 more than previous table leader – the Volvo Ocean Race.

Other new entries this month include Russell Coutts, who changed his ‘friend’ page into a ‘fan’ page and with over 5,000 likes enters at number 23 on our list. Also added this month was Optimist with 6215 likes.

In a month when an ‘estimated’ 110,o00 people showed up in Plymouth to watch the America’s Cup World Series and ‘hundreds of millions’ more engaged with the series via streamed TV, only 2690 of those ‘liked’ the America’s Cup which represented 18.6% growth over the previous month. However, Oman Sail grew faster at 22.57%  and added 3798 likes. The Volvo Ocean Race also attracted more likes than the America’s Cup, adding 2964.

In pure percentage terms, properties outside the top 30 did better. GreenComm Racing grew at 88%, but that only represents 250 likes in real terms.

Yacht Racing Facebook Chart Top 10

At the end of September, Emirates Team NZ had only just launched their new blog. It will be interesting to see how their strategy – driven by social media people who actually know what they are doing will perform in coming months. Clearly Oman Sail is doing something right that other properties aren’t.

The Top 30 Yacht Racing properties on Facebook chart is here.