While the social landscape continues to change and evolve, our mission remains the same--treat social content as CONTENT. Regardless of platform or space, we curate the best content because we believe good content is, well, good content--and good content always has a seat at our table. We use social apps and tools to curate the most relevant tweets/posts and measure sentiment of trending topics. By leveraging the wealth of social content, we're able to enhance our linear and live-stream programs by integrating them creatively and efficiently everyday. Before the age of social media, news outlets sent mobile production trucks and camera crews to gather news and information. It was costly and cumbersome. In our current climate, we're able to curate news, information and opinion from our NFL owners, athletes, clubs, and fans from across the globe at the comfort of our own desks. With so much available at our fingertips, we pride ourselves in filtering and selecting the perfect content to enhance our shows. Beyond looking the part, we collaborate with Developers to create interactive displays inpsired by social platforms and work hand-in-hand with Producers and Talent to ensure the language and execution embodies our social and digital community.
Every year, we push ourselves to innovate a new experience. In previous years, we were the first to integrate Spectacles by Snap, Instagram Stories, and custom-built Touchscreen apps inspired by Instagram/Snap. This year, we collaborated with Reddit to host its first-ever embedded poll experience for Super Bowl LIV.
Our strategy is multifacted. On the most basic level, we integrate social content that is relevant and intriging to tee up or punctuate our segment debates and conversations. We audit thousands of social posts and hand-select the most relevant content to enhance shows, segments, and game highlights. We take great care in our review and approval process, by evaluating every piece of content to ensure we're attributing credit to the rightful owner by the time it appears in our shows.
Featuring tweets/posts certainly allows us to look the part, but we want to authentically feel social as well. A key feature and centerpiece to our social storytelling involves our interactive touchscreen. It's one of many ways we're able to display social content, but furthermore, our touchscreen apps and displays are inspired but the user interface and user experience of popular social platforms like Instagram. We're the first Network to develop and innovate these social touchscreen apps and every year, we continue to add to its funtionality. This year, we've engineered the touchscreen to have a Sentiment Slider and a Poll Buttons--similar to the functions you can find on Instagram Stories.
The ultimate goal is to be social and to be inspired by social content to build truly memorable experiences and segments touching all platforms. The most unique segment we created this year was inspired by George Kittle who lobbyed for "National Tight Ends Day". Drafting off Kittle's passionate campaign, we created a "social good" activation that involved linear broadcast, Digital and Social platforms and ultimately saw an engagement of 2.4M social Impressions and most importantly raised over $7K for Iowa Children's Hospital.
The NFL Media group continues to see great success. During the 2019 NFL Regular Season, we were the 2nd most watched cable sports network among P18-49 for the 4th year in a row. This year, we outperformed FS1 by +38% and ESPN2 by +36% amonth P18-49 viewers. In the Post Season, NFLN was the 3rd most watched cable sports network among both P18-49 and overall viewers, a position we've been able to hold two years in a row.
Our associated show handles @NFLGameday has grown +24% YOY follower growth while @NFLTotalAccess saw a +17% YOY follower growth this season.
The success we've seen with our ratings and social footprint is always exciting to see, but this season, we're most proud of the numbers from our George Kittle activation you can see HERE. Currently, the bid is $7,050 on NFL Auction with all proceeds going to the Iowa Children's Hospital. The belt traveled to top-performing TEs in the NFL--Darren Fells in Houston, Noah Fant in Denver, Mark Andrews in Baltimore, and Travis Kelce in Kansas City. The best part, knowing the funds raised will go to very deserving children at Iowa Children's Hospital who tweeted the sweetest message. All in all, conversation around this belt has garnered 2.4M social Impressions.
It's immensely gratifying for us to experience first-hand the influence of social media, espeically when we creatively leverage content to affect positivity and change.
