The International Teqball Federation (FITEQ) has maintained its position as the world’s seventh most followed International Federation in the 2021 BCW International Sports Federations Social Media Ranking, whilst ranking second in the non-Olympic sport category.

FITEQ’s innovative digital strategy, implemented across a multitude of platforms, has enabled the governing body of the world’s fastest growing sport to grow its online following to over six million. FITEQ’s increased focus on digital campaigns, which are centred on empowering the global teqball community by showcasing their skills on a global platform, has supported FITEQ’s ambition for the sport to sustain growth in spite of the impact of COVID-19. The inclusion of football and entertainment stars like Lionel Messi and Justin Bieber in digital campaigns continues to make a significant contribution to online engagement.

The BCW report highlights FITEQ’s 6.3 million fans across Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook, following an impressive 66% growth rate during 2021. Despite 2021 being an Olympic year, FITEQ managed the third highest growth rate of all Olympic and non-Olympic IFs in the top 10 list. One of the most successful areas of FITEQ’s digital strategy last year was its rise on TikTok. The sport has amassed over 1.5 million followers on the platform, placing it third place on the overall TikTok followers list. With an estimated 40% of all TikTok users aged between 16 and 24, the success of TikTok illustrates teqball’s popularity with young people, and the social media channel will continue to be key aspect of FITEQ’s efforts to engage with its youthful audience.

FITEQ’s engagement rate has been high across all platforms, with the federation recording the fourth most interactions per Instagram post of all IFs, with a total of over 78 million interactions at 278,000 per post. Additionally, FITEQ had the seventh most Facebook interactions with a total of 83 million at 101,000 per post. This engagement success is largely due to FITEQ’s innovative and consistent video content - FITEQ has the second most views per video on Instagram and the fifth most views per video on Facebook, averaging 354,000 and 271,000 views per video on the platforms respectively.

FITEQ’s leadership also made impressive progress on social media this year, with FITEQ President Gabor Borsanyi ranking as the third most followed International Federation President or Secretary General with over 35,000 followers on Twitter and General Secretary Marius Vizer Jr in fifth place with over 22,000. In addition to this, FITEQ Chairman Viktor Huszar has over 30,000 followers and FITEQ Vice President Gyorgy Gattyan has over 10,000. The leadership’s Twitter content plays an integral role in FITEQ’s overall digital strategy, in particular acting as a source of exclusive updates and announcements.

Teqball Co-Founders and FITEQ Executive Board members Gábor Borsányi (FITEQ President), Viktor Huszár (FITEQ Chairman) and György Gattyán (FITEQ Vice-President), “We made it our goal at the start of 2021 to ensure it was another strong year for FITEQ in terms of online engagement. With 66% growth leading to over 6.3 million fans across all major social media platforms, it is clear how our digital content has continued to capture the imagination of sports fans across the world. We are delighted to welcome so many new fans to the sport and to see our innovative strategy recognised in the BCW Ranking. Especially given teqball and para teqball is a youth-focussed sport, social media is a crucial way of connecting with new fans and athletes and promoting the message that our sport is open to all, regardless of age, gender, background, or sporting ability.”

FITEQ Head of Digital and Marketing Services Artur Papizsanszkij added, “As was the case in 2020, the pandemic continued to provide challenges to the world of sport in 2021. This made our digital engagement strategy all the more important as we looked to continue our upward trajectory. Heading into this year, we had over 3 million followers across our social channels. Today, we have surpassed 6 million and we are chasing down even higher numbers! Our digital growth has been at the heart of the teqball journey from the very beginning and it will continue to been an important contributor to the development of teqball and para teqball as we adapt to a post-pandemic world.”

FITEQ’s digital success in 2021 both reflected and complemented the considerable progress being made by the sport as a whole. During the course of the past year, teqball was confirmed as a medal sport for the 2023 European Games, a new competition format to further professionalise the sport was launched, a highly successful Teqball World Championships was hosted in Poland, para teqball was officially launched, and a Sustainable Development Handbook to guide the teqball family on the journey to become carbon neutral was created, amongst many other milestones reached.

The 2021 BCW International Sports Federations Social Media Ranking summarises IFs’ performance on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube, by looking at an aggregated number of followers and by quantifying their ‘True Reach’ using an algorithm-based formula measuring how many users the account reaches with their posts. The full report can be found here.