Inter Milan grew followers, impressions, and views—while posting less

This story is part of a series about how marketers for sports teams and leagues around the world approach social media strategy.

Less is more, or so the saying goes. The marketing team at Inter Milan, the reigning champions of the Italian pro soccer league Serie A, certainly found that to be true.

When Luca Adornato joined Inter Milan as its brand and marketing director last spring, the club, which was under new ownership by American investment fund Oaktree Capital Management, was focused on international audience growth.

To achieve that growth, Adornato took a chance. While he made sure Inter Milan maintained a presence on numerous platforms around the world and implemented a different content approach on each, his team also decreased the amount of social content they were posting—by around a third in the past year, he told us.

In that time, follower count across channels increased by 20% YoY, impressions rose by 43%, and video views went up by 33%, according to the club. In early August, Inter Milan surpassed 100 million total followers.

“Working on the strategy and then on the platforms allowed us to drive a quality over quantity approach,” Adornato told Marketing Brew. “Targeting all the content in order to be really distinctive, to be authentic, and to be interesting for the platform and the audience itself, that’s something that really stood out to me in this process.”

Balance striker

Adornato’s approach to content strategy hinged on striking a balance between messaging that speaks to the fan who’s already an expert on Inter Milan, and also to a broader audience of non-sports enthusiasts, he said.

“On one side, we have a very huge core fanbase, which actually knows everything about us, so…we have to reinforce this feeling of belonging [with them],” Adornato told us. “On the other end…we have to try to explain who we are.”

It’s an approach that is becoming core to many other sports marketers’ social playbooks as leagues and teams look for new fandoms.

In Inter Milan’s case, appealing to potential new fans, especially in the US, involved a content collaboration with filmmaker, actor, and sports fan Spike Lee that was released ahead of last summer’s Club World Cup to give viewers a better sense of Inter Milan’s brand and heritage, Adornato said. While Inter Milan also posts funny videos and collaborates with other teams across sports in an effort to broaden its appeal, on-pitch action is the priority when it comes to posting, he noted.

“We have seen a lot of other clubs, other sports properties, that in the last five to seven years, have stated that they would like to go beyond football, beyond the pitch,” Adornato said. “We reverse, a little bit, the perception, saying that we would like to broaden the football field. Football is really at the heart of what we do, it’s who we are, and that should give us the credibility [and] authenticity to…touch other territories.”

Inter Milan’s content strategy differs from platform to platform. On TikTok and YouTube, for instance, the general goal is to reach a broad, international audience that skews younger, while Facebook posts tend to be more geotargetted, Adornato said.

Stiff competition

With phase one of growing Inter Milan’s online audience essentially complete, Adornato said the next step for his team is to focus on increasing engagement metrics such as watch time. During the first two weeks of September, Inter Milan ranked as the third-top mover in terms of engagements among all pro sports teams tracked by content intelligence platform Mondo Metrics, with more than 19 million total engagements across about 800 posts, an increase of 41% compared to the previous period.

Adornato is also thinking about building up the club’s brand further in the US, as well as in Asia and the Middle East. To boost Inter Milan fandom in the states, Adornato said his team is leaning into collabs, after noticing that the Spike Lee video led to US audience growth on YouTube. There are also brand collab opportunities: Earlier this year, Inter Milan partnered with Sony Music Italy on a line of Pink Floyd merch, and in July, the club debuted its away kit for the season at Fanatics Fest NYC.

Even with the power of big names, the American sports market is tough to crack, but Adornato thinks Inter Milan is on the right track.

“It’s a very demanding market; it’s very fragmented,” he said. “We know that we have to face hurdles in terms of overcoming college sports, overcoming local properties. It’s tough, but at the same time, we do believe that if we…approach it in the right way—maybe step by step, maybe targeting some specific niche, some specific geography—it could be the right move.”