Worldwide Social Media Benchmarks: Sports Clubs Q3 2026

What’s in this report

Sports club social media benchmarks for Q3 2026 show Instagram as the strongest channel for clubs and national teams worldwide: the median sports club’s Instagram post earned 767.5 interactions in September, more than 10 times the 73 on Facebook. Median engagement reached up to 3.38% on Instagram, a 15-month high, and up to 1.44% on Facebook, also a 15-month high. Carousels led Instagram post types, and FC Barcelona collected the most interactions of any sports club on both platforms.

This quarterly benchmarks report draws on Emplifi’s dataset of 4,499 Facebook pages and 2,370 Instagram profiles in the worldwide sport club category, covering July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026. Sport club is Emplifi’s benchmark category for professional clubs and national teams, from FC Barcelona and Real Madrid to Manchester City and Team India.

User-generated content: what’s achievable

Brands using Emplifi’s UGC solution saw these average uplifts in Q3 2026:

• 11.49x conversion rate
• 4.84x repeat website visits
• 1.03x average order value

The figures come from Emplifi’s Worldwide Brands UGC benchmark, averaged across 68 to 83 accounts per metric. That benchmark covers brands in every category, so it is not specific to sports clubs.

Organic performance: Facebook and Instagram

Platform landscape at a glance

Sports clubs have more than twice as many followers on Instagram as on Facebook, and they post there more often: 203 times in the quarter against 171. Instagram profiles collected almost 10 times the interactions.

Median post interactions

The median follows the middle-ranked page or profile each month, so a single viral post can’t move it.

Instagram has held between 727 and 881 interactions per post for 15 months, with 792 in July, 796 in August and 767.5 in September 2026. Facebook moved from 99 in July 2025 to 73 in September 2026, its lowest point of the period.

Relative median post interactions

Indexed to its own 15-month high, Instagram ended September at 87%, closer to its peak than Facebook, which finished at 74%. Both peaks were in July 2025.

Median post impressions

Impressions count how often posts were displayed, whether or not anyone interacted. They measure visibility, not engagement.

Sports club Instagram posts were displayed more than twice as often as Facebook posts in September. Impressions fell on both platforms over the 15 months, in line with the wider market: the medians for all brands worldwide roughly halved on Instagram and on Facebook between July 2025 and September 2026. Sports clubs held up better than that, with Instagram impressions moving from 18,263 in July 2025 to 11,865 in September 2026, about a third lower. Facebook impressions peaked at 9,046 in January 2026 and were 5,198 in September.

Engagement rate trends

Median post engagement rates this quarter:

• Instagram: up to 3.38%
• Facebook: up to 1.44%

Instagram’s median ranged from 2.97% to 3.38% across the quarter, and Facebook’s from 1.21% to 1.44%, with both peaking in September. Instagram’s rate has risen by almost half since its low of 2.30% in November 2025. Facebook’s stayed between 1.12% and 1.44% for 15 months.

From this quarter, Emplifi calculates engagement rate from impressions instead of reach, because Facebook no longer provides reach data. These rates are therefore not comparable with the engagement rates in earlier quarterly reports.

Best-performing post types

Instagram: Carousels led with a median of 847 interactions per post, ahead of Reels at 767 and single images at 749.

Facebook: Live Video and Reels ran almost level, at medians of 93 and 89 interactions, though Live Video is a rare format. Photos earned 63, status updates 62 and links 32.

Full organic post type performance (Q3 2026):

Post type distribution trends:

Reels nearly doubled their share of sports clubs’ Facebook posts, from 12.3% in July 2025 to 22.5% in September 2026, while photos fell from 74.4% to 69.1%. Live Video stayed under 1% of Facebook posts throughout. On Instagram, the three formats split posts almost evenly in September 2026: carousels 35.3%, single images 33.6% and Reels 30.1%, with Reels up from 28.4% in July 2025.

Top performing pages and profiles

Facebook: top pages by total interactions (Q3 2026):

Instagram: top profiles by total interactions (Q3 2026):

FC Barcelona led Instagram with fewer followers and fewer posts than Real Madrid, and it also led on Facebook. Team India, the national cricket team, took third place on Instagram, and Manchester City came third on Facebook with 1,739 posts, the most of the top three.

Top posts this quarter

FC Barcelona held the top two Instagram posts, led by an image of Leo Messi and Lamine Yamal, while a Reel from Norway’s national football team topped Facebook.

Facebook:

Instagram:

How does your brand compare?

These benchmarks describe the median sports club. A free social media assessment shows where your own pages and profiles sit against them, platform by platform.

Get your free social media assessment

Paid performance: Facebook and Instagram ads

This quarter’s data has no sports club-specific ad benchmark, so the paid figures below come from Emplifi’s Worldwide ad accounts benchmark, which spans ad accounts in every industry.

Where brands are spending

Facebook feed takes about a third of the average ad budget, more than double Instagram feed in second. Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels follow almost level, with Instagram Stories fifth.

CPC and CPM by placement

The most cost-efficient placements this quarter:

• Lowest CPC: Facebook feed, Facebook Reels and Instagram Stories
• Lowest CPM: Facebook feed, Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels

Facebook feed is the cheapest placement for both clicks and impressions. Instagram Reels is cheap for impressions but has the highest CPC, $1.15, which matters for clubs sending fans to a ticketing or club shop page.

Spend, CPC and CPM by placement (Q3 2026):

Click-through rate by placement

Facebook feed’s click-through rate, 1.67%, is more than five times Instagram Reels’ 0.30%, and Facebook Reels is the only other placement above 1%.

CTR by placement (Q3 2026):

Cost trends over time

Q3 2026 ad cost benchmarks, shown for September 2026 with the quarter’s monthly range:

Worldwide CPM peaked at $2.32 in November 2025, fell to $1.68 in January 2026 and rebuilt through spring. After a July 2026 dip to $1.90, it rose to $2.25 in September, its highest level since November. CTR climbed from 0.95% in July 2025 to 1.28% in September 2026, a 15-month high, and the all-brands benchmark tracked both lines slightly lower.

The all-brands benchmark is Emplifi’s global series across all brands. No monthly CPC series is available.

How to use these benchmarks

Use these medians as a reference point for clubs and national teams, not a ceiling. Pull your own median post interactions, impressions, engagement rate and post type mix for each platform, and compare them with the September 2026 figures above.

On Instagram, carousels earn the most per post, and Reels and single images follow close behind. The gap between formats is small, so a varied mix of match-day carousels, Reels and player images works, and the quarter’s top posts show that star players and national-team moments travel furthest.

On Facebook, Reels earn almost as much as Live Video and about 40% more than photos, yet photos are still more than two-thirds of posts. Shifting part of the photo output into Reels is the clearest opportunity. See the main Q3 2026 social media benchmarks findings for the overall US and worldwide picture.

Methodology

This report is produced quarterly from Emplifi’s proprietary social media dataset, drawn from the platform used by more than 22,000 brands worldwide.

Data collection: Data is pulled once per quarter and reflects the state of Emplifi’s database at the start of the quarter following the period analyzed. It is not updated between releases.

Sample: 4,499 Facebook pages and 2,370 Instagram profiles in Emplifi’s worldwide sport club category, July 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026.

Reporting period: Monthly metrics are reported for September 2026, the final month of the quarter, and trend commentary covers July 2025 through September 2026. The ads trend series also covers July 2025 through September 2026.

Minimum thresholds: Reports require a minimum of 50 Instagram profiles and 50 Facebook pages for a given region and industry combination. Interaction distribution data requires a minimum of 300 profiles. Ad benchmarks require a minimum of 200 active ad accounts from the region or industry.

Key definitions

• Interactions (Facebook): Sum of all reactions (Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sorry, Anger), comments and shares on brand-published posts. Care reactions are counted under Likes.
• Interactions (Instagram): Sum of likes, comments, saves, shares and reposts on brand-published posts. Saves, shares and reposts are counted from Q3 2026.
• Median post interactions: The middle-ranked page or profile when sorted by monthly post interactions. It represents typical performance rather than an average, so outliers don’t skew the figure.
• Relative median interactions: Median interactions indexed to the maximum value in the reporting period for each platform, expressed as a percentage. Useful for comparing direction across platforms at different absolute scales.
• Impressions: The number of times a post was displayed, whether or not anyone interacted with it. Reflects visibility rather than engagement.
• Engagement rate: Interactions divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage. From Q3 2026 the rate is based on impressions instead of reach, because Facebook no longer provides reach data, so it is not comparable with earlier quarters.
• Organic: Posts not paid to be promoted, detected using Emplifi’s internal algorithm with near-100% accuracy.
• CPC / CPM: Median cost per click and cost per thousand impressions across all available ad accounts, shown for the top five placements by relative spend.
• Relative spend: Normalized distribution (%) showing the average share of an account’s budget allocated to each placement.
• CTR: Median click-through rate for the top five placements by relative spend.

All costs are in USD. All figures are medians unless otherwise noted; UGC uplifts are averages. Data is first normalized at the profile or page level before aggregation.