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Back in 2015, World Rugby’s social media platforms showed they had the ability to reach a captive audience with a huge hunger for rugby news, videos and content – over 400 million video views at the Rugby World Cup was testament to this. The challenge heading into 2016 was to continue this upward trajectory in fan engagement by serving existing fans and reaching new audiences across all of World Rugby’s global tournaments. Following a record-breaking 2015, World Rugby’s social media platforms continued to break the mould in 2016 and bring the game to new audiences across the globe with the arrival of rugby sevens at the Olympic Games.ENGAGING NEW AND EXISTING FANS ACROSS THE WORLD With the Olympic Games on the horizon, achieving significant uplift on social media for both the men’s and women’s HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series was a key priority heading into 2016. The introduction of multi-language channels for World Rugby on both Twitter and Facebook kicked off the year with a truly global flavour and continued investment in graphic design and video led to a record-breaking start to 2016. More than 60 million video views, 100 million plus reach and 100,000 new fans across social media platforms provided the perfect launchpad heading into Rio 2016, with huge spikes in fan engagement on Snapchat and Instagram showing younger audiences’ interest in the sevens format. Before the 24 men’s and women’s teams jetted off for Rio 2016, the World Rugby U20 Championship in Manchester provided some of the game’s future stars with an opportunity to showcase their talents. Once again, the results on social platforms showed huge uplift from 2015, with a 600 per cent increase in video views reflecting the suite of video platforms available. Snapchat story, Instagram video and Facebook video proved the three leading platforms during the tournament.Despite the growth in video across all of World Rugby’s tournaments in the first half of 2016, the Olympic Games required a new strategy. Due to video rights, no action from rugby sevens was available for social media platforms. The solution? Reliance on our extensive rugby sevens archive to promote players involved, our biggest-ever investment in graphic design and illustration, as well as a multilingual team to cover the event in five languages (including Mandarin, on a Chinese social media platform). The results reflected the strategy, with the women’s rugby sevens achieving the biggest ever social footprint for an event, with 3.5 million video views and over two million engagements across all platforms. World Rugby’s platforms delivered four times as many social interactions as the next closest international federation during the six days of competition and helped reach 16.83 million new fans. The records continued to tumble heading into the latter part of the year, with the World Rugby Awards achieving a 48 per cent increase in video views across all platforms, reaching 32 million people. For the first time ever World Rugby used Facebook Live to broadcast the event. The technology was once again implemented at the women’s Dubai Sevens in December, reaching almost 200,000 fans. ABOVE AND OPPOSITEWorld Rugby’s dynamic social media output during Rio 2016 helped attract 16.83 million new fans to the sportCELEBRATE | SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT90 WORLD RUGBY YEAR IN REVIEW 2016