CASE STUDY: How the US Open Grew 200K+ Followers on Instagram in Less Than a Month 🎾

The 2024 US Open set the record for the highest attended tournament in their history, with over one million fans attending for the first time ever. These attendance wins were matched by social wins, with the US Open gaining over 200,000 new followers on Instagram over the course of the tournament and we wanted to break down what they did well, and where they could have improved.

• What the US Open Did Well ✅

• What We’d Do Differently 🔀

• BONUS: The Quantity vs. Quality Debate 📊

What the US Open Did Well

Increased Content Volume

Before the tournament the US Open was posting 2-7 times per day on Instagram. During the tournament they were posting 70-100 times per day. That’s a 10x-50x increase in content volume per day. This does not include Stories.

This wasn’t just on Instagram either. On X/Twitter they were posting 80-100 times per day, and on YouTube they were posting 50 long form videos daily — including select full matches.

While 70-100 posts per day may seem excessive, the US Open only has ~2 weeks per year when all eyes are on them and they take full advantage of that. During the tournament not only does engagement per post increase, but the likelihood of content fatigue decreases.

Note: While you should definitely increase your posting volume around product launches and marquee events, we wouldn’t necessarily recommend a 50x increase (more on that later).

_{Below: an example of a single day's worth of posts.}

Prioritized Upload Speed

In a lot of sports, you’ll see fan accounts and media pages posting highlights before the team or leagues get a chance to… not the US Open.

The US Open beat a lot of accounts to the punch by posting their own highlights first and they were rewarded for it, getting 10+ million views on a lot of key moments from the tournament.

Leveraged Organic Celebrity Moments

What do Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, Lewis Hamilton, Steph Curry, Kevin Jonas, Noah Lyles, Jon Hamm, Matthew McConaughey, Simone Biles, Tony Goldwyn, Stephen Colbert, John Mayer, Tyrese Maxey, Hugh Jackman, Aaron Judge, and Lin-Manuel Miranda all have in common?

They were all featured on the US Open’s Instagram account in Reels that got between 1M and 17M views during the course of the tournament.

The US Open was not shy about featuring its celebrity guests repeatedly. At one point in a 10 post span they made 7 posts about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce (see below).

Not only does this content perform well with added reach and engagement, but it exposes the tournament to new audiences who do not normally interact with the brand. These celebrities act as a bridge between non-tennis fans and the US Open.

Plus, this content is super organic, it’s taking advantage of what’s already happening as opposed to trying to manufacture moments.

Spanish Content

42 million people in the United States speak Spanish as their first language which is almost as many people who live in all of Spain.

In order to tap into this market the US Open incorporated Spanish first content into their social strategy, posting highlights in Spanish and collab-posts with Spanish speaking creators on their main page.

Note: While creating Spanish first content was a smart move from the US Open, this content underperformed compared to similar English speaking content. They could have created a different account for their Spanish content — @usopenespanol for example.

That being said, most social platforms are working on integrated language translation, which will make second language accounts unnecessary in the future.

What We’d Do Differently

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