Christine Cassis

(u/thunderemoji)

The NFL season kick-off is here! So what better time to do a quick overview of Football communities on Reddit? From team-specific subreddits to memes, broader discussion, player fan clubs and more, here’s a quick rundown, by-the-numbers:

167.4M average monthly views in the last year

226.1M average monthly views for 2017 season

7.3M average monthly uniques in last year

8.2M average monthly uniques in 2017 season

A place for every sports fan

Did you know that there are more than 950+ sports communities on Reddit, generating more than 576M+ monthly pageviews? Fans from across the globe come to share highlights, watch matches together and root for their favorite teams.

Not only that, but sports fans are amongst Reddit’s most engaged. Across top verticals, we see sports fans being the most engaged, with more than 35M+ monthly engagements (votes, posts and comments) per user compared to our top verticals.

Football thrives on Reddit

From game highlights, to team-specific threads and breaking news, football never sleeps on Reddit. On game days, we see an increase in engagements in football-related subreddits by 86% compared to off-days. We also see a variety of communities get involved. As the season gets underway, we see these conversations spill over into other communities. For example, we see memes and gifs spill over into r/Funny and rhetorical questions in r/AskReddit.

We also see football community subscribers frequent other popular communities, including r/NBA, r/technology, r/WorldNews, r/movies and more. And beyond infiltrating broader interests and topics, football communities are abuzz all season long.

Most engaged fans on Reddit

So which NFL team takes the cake on Reddit? Although it will come as no surprise that the Patriots, Eagles and Packers have the largest fan bases on the site, their fans are middle of the pack in actual engagement. Based on per-user engagement since the start of the 2017 season, the top five teams based user engagement might be surprising:

Los Angeles Rams Houston Texans New York Giants Tampa Bay Buccaneers (surprisingly, also the smallest fanbase on Reddit) Chicago Bears

Not all fan bases engage with Reddit in the same way, though. Voting behavior, especially, can vary quite a bit from team to team. Bengals fans are the most downvote-happy users, downvoting 2.0% more than the median NFL fanbase. Jaguars fans, meanwhile, are the most willing to upvote, doling out 1.6% more upvotes than the median.

Competing Fanbases

Unsurprisingly, team alliances and rivalries start to emerge when more closely looking at fanbases’ voting trends.

Using each comment’s and post’s vote ratio from NFL fans as an “expected vote,” we can determine which teams’ fanbases upvote and downvote each other’s content relative to those expectations.

Titans fans, for example, upvote Saints fans 1.4% more than expected, while downvoting Jaguars fans 20% more than expected––and Jags fans return the favor by downvoting Titans fans 14% more than expected. Classic rivalries can be seen here, as well as some budding NFL alliances.

Ways to engage

Looking for ways to engage the hyperactive football fans of Reddit? Our Brand Strategy team has put together a few ideas:

Surround the Fan Dialogue: During the season, our sports and Football communities see a huge spike in traffic due to our users’ inclination to create official game threads (megathreads) for each matchup throughout the season, participate in discussions and talk about any highlights and news. Let’s have your brand surround these conversations via Reddit promoted media.

Reddit vs. The Pros : Redditors look to professional commentators, Fantasy Sports speculators, and other sports influencers to determine their predictions, and then compare and contrast their strategies with other users. Let’s find an influencer in the NFL space, have them create weekly predictions, then crowdsource predictions made by Redditors. If Redditors predict more accurate results, we’ll trigger some charitable donation, discount, giveaway, etc.



The Gridiron AMA Series : Let’s provide unique perspectives on the sport of Football from a wide variety of verticals. Be the conduit for talent for AMAs with sports data-scientists, advertising analysts, and NFL/NCAA scouts who can each provide a unique perspective on the game.

So, whether you’re looking to join the conversation, discover budding alliances and revisit NFL rivalries, or just relive last night’s highlights, there’s something for every football fan on Reddit.

Stay tuned for more insight reports right here on our blog!