King James draws Miami Heat fans faster on Facebook than Twitter

Lebron’s move to Miami is causing quite a stir on social media. The number of hoops fans following the Heat on Twitter and Facebook is increasing so fast the growth curve looks like, well, a hockey stick. Given the unprecedented hype of this media event, a jump like this is not surprising, but on closer examination, we notice that the Facebook growth is significantly faster and larger than the growth on Twitter.

Given Facebook’s critical mass, it’s not really big news that the Heat have more FB likes than Twitter followers. Still, the rate of growth on Facebook is so far outstripping Twitter than it is worth noting.

The inflection point occurs on July 8, when King James made his historic pronouncement. Since then, the number of fans following the Heat on Twitter has grown by 5,154 (25%), but the number of fans “liking” the Heat on FB has grown by 38,576 (143%).

According to TNS Research, the Heat have just over 2 million Americans (12+) who say the Heat are their favorite team. Sixty-two percent of these “favorite team” fans live outside of Florida, and just 442,240 (20%) live in the Miami DMA. Obviously would expect these numbers to swell both inside Orlando as well as in Florida, throughout the U.S. and abroad. More

It’s also important to note that Lebron has over 400,000 fans following him on Twitter, ranking him #8 on the list of top NBA stars; and the super star has over 2.6 Facebook fans, which makes him as big as the NBA on the social platform, and ranks him 199th on the overall list of largest FB followings.