Time to shine a light on our legends

SPORT is fast becoming one of social media’s biggest allies.

The growth and diversification of social media platforms have provided unlimited outlets for sport to grow its reach and presence.

Sports stars rank alongside and in some cases above musicians, actors and religious entrepreneurs as some of the most followed people across social media platforms.

Current and former sports players have become opinion leaders and information sources, and they attract massive followings for their entertainment value.

Marketing is usually a numbers game and brands usually follow the masses, which, in turn, increases the value of these men and women.

Perhaps the glory of social media is that it has now taken sports off the field of play and into people’s homes; more specifically, through their cherished gadgets like phones and tablets.

Fans are able to catch up on dressing room details, training updates, information on injuries and a whole lot more directly from the players themselves.

This has created a sense of being “in” with the players or teams.

Sports stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Serena Williams, LeBron James and former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter-turned-wrestler Ronda Rousey are unrivalled in their global reach.

However, according to explodingtopics.com, it is Ronaldo (CR7) who tops the list as the most-followed sportsperson on social media.

“With approximately 901 million followers, Cristiano Ronaldo is comfortably the most-followed person across social media platforms.

“Despite no TikTok presence, Ronaldo’s unrivalled Instagram following of approximately 600 million, coupled with 100 million followers on both Facebook and X, puts him at Number 1,” the site says.

His competition in the Top 5 are music stars Selena Gomez (690,5 million followers), Justin Bieber (594,9 million), Taylor Swift (539 million) and Ariana Grande (509,7 million).

On Instagram alone, Ronaldo has over 669,9 million followers, followed by another football star Lionel Messi with 500,2 million.

On Facebook, on which he is the undisputed king, by all statistical measures and numbers, he had about 168,7 million followers in January 2024 and was second only to Facebook itself with 183,7 million followers.

In the Top 10 Facebook accounts, the only other sportsperson on the list is Lionel Messi with 116,8 million followers; while Real Madrid are the only sports team, with 114,4 million followers.

According to GlobalStats.com, there were 1,3 million Facebook users in Zimbabwe in early 2023, which constituted about 44 percent of social media users in the country.

YouTube had 18,4 percent and was followed by Pinterest (12,85 percent), X (formerly Twitter) (12,3 percent), Instagram (7,52 percent) and LinkedIn has 3 percent.

The majority of the nostalgic football fan base lies in the 30-70 age group. Additionally, they are largely found on Facebook.

This generation can be found endlessly talking about how beautiful football was at Rufaro Stadium back in the day.

In some cases, they usually have pictures of full stadiums and, clearly, passionate players appear to have caught on.

The 1982 Zimbabwe Soccer Star of the Year and former Warriors goalkeeper, Japhet Mparutsa, is one clear example.

He set up his page and keeps it loaded with anecdotes and images from his illustrious career with Dynamos, Black Rhinos and Tornadoes.

He has found a new following, and this is despite the fact that he stopped playing football over 25 years ago.

His collection of stories, based on his travels across Africa, have brought him to a new audience that engages with him to learn more.

He is active on numerous groups formed to reminisce about football in Zimbabwe.

George Mbwando and Alois Bunjira are another pair that uses social media, especially Facebook, to tell tales of their time in football.

A local events and insurance company latched onto Bunjira’s programme, where he chats with football legends, and has created a platform for its services.

That company has built multiple synergies in sport after starting out as a single-purpose entity.

A page dedicated to the exploits of the late Highlanders star, Tymon “White Horse” Mabaleka, who also attained glory as a music producer, is fast showing the possibilities created by engaging content.

I picked these former players because they have begun to put substance to the argument that football was very exciting back in the day.

We have an abundance of sporting legends in Zimbabwe, with every community literally housing its own sporting heroes.

In my hometown, Marondera, we speak fondly of football legends like Bhamusi Dharakishoni and athletics legends like Philemon Harineki (later Hanneck).

We reminisce about Proton Stars FC, Cosco FC and Marondera United.

However, we do not have a platform dedicated to sharing these and many other stories and accomplishments.

And social media is a perfect platform for this.

On it, they can relax, share their memories and even begin to build interesting personas through their posts.

Former Liverpool and Manchester City star James Milner is known for being a very simple player on the field.

He was never flashy, but he got the work done.

He spent over 20 seasons playing in the Premier League and kept a very low profile.

A fan started a page called @BoringMilner, which posts absurdly random statements, playing up the player’s low-key lifestyle.

When Milner went on social media, he took cues from the fan page and has since grown his presence to over 1,6 million followers.

The templates are already there for our legends or people with the drive, passion and digital street smarts to bring their stories to a new and wider audience.

I would love to see the day when our legends’ stories, as told by themselves, are known as widely as those of the likes of Diego Maradona, Usain Bolt and Pele.

Let us hear these stories.

 

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