This article is part of the Verne newsletter, the biweekly digital culture newsletter of EL PAÍS. If you want to sign up to receive it You can do it at this link.
The Spanish men’s rugby 7 team has a crucial championship from Friday, June 21 to Sunday, June 23: the last place for the Paris Olympic Games is played in Monaco. The Lions have the opportunity to return to the Games eight years later, after finishing tenth in Rio 2016. (It can be viewed online for free at Rugbypasstv).
But that’s not the reason why the searches in Google and, above all, on TikTok, have grown suddenly in recent weeks. If we look at the figures in the account of the Spanish Rugby Federation on the Chinese platform, starting in April we begin to see an increase in video views, but it is from the end of May and the beginning of June when the numbers skyrocket. At the time of writing, the @ferugby account on TikTok has 188,000 followers. According to the Socialblade tracking tool, from June 6 to 19 they have added almost 110,000 new followers.
“The boom of our TikTok account coincided precisely with the boys’ and girls’ rugby 7 teams,” explains Javier Alonso, head of networks at the Spanish Rugby Federation. He is a journalist, he is 25 years old and he has been working at the Federation for a year and a half with his colleague Javier Izquierdo, who is the audiovisual manager. The man from Valladolid says that when they started uploading content to TikTok they expected it to be good, “but not so good, so to speak.”
Before working here I was in the world of television and I was already a big fan of rugby (I had personal accounts dedicated to it). “This is my dream job, being in a team, recording them, integrated as one more… When I received the call to run the federation’s networks, I said: when do I have to sign? I am very happy, it is true that it is very sacrificial, and it limits me a lot because I record the content, it has to be done with all the selections, and the selections travel a lot,” explains Alonso by phone.
“The boys and girls rugby 7 teams travel all over the world all year round,” says Alonso. But for the first time they were playing in Spain (the HSBC Sevens Series, an annual competition with the best teams in the world, took place in Madrid from May 31 to June 2) and we wanted to take advantage of people seeing from the inside what a week of competition is like. , on a tournament day, which is done just one minute before going out to play.” The players themselves sometimes propose ideas or ask to record more: “They all know me and there is a relationship with all of them. The naturalness with which I take out the camera and they react is something super positive. I think it shows in the videos, that naturalness, that spontaneity.”
The videos that go viral the most are those of the men’s rugby 7 team (in this modality the matches are 14 minutes of effective play and the teams are seven players, while in rugby 15 they are 80 minutes and 15 players). More specifically, those in the locker rooms: there is one with three million views, another with 1.7 million views, another with 1.6 million… and the list could go on. Although one of the most viewed is from the players of the 15-a-side rugby team: 1.9 million views for the summary of their match against Wales.
Asked why he believes that the TikTok algorithm has rewarded their content, Javier Alonso explains: “We believe that one of the factors is the quantity (they publish 7 to 10 videos on average per day, although some days they have published about 20) ; Well, the platform rewards quantity; and also that many of the people who didn’t know rugby before say ‘we didn’t know them, we were completely unaware of the routines they have’ and they also see that they start dancing and getting excited. I think it’s something quite new, people liked it and they got hooked.” The truth is that the majority of the comments on the videos, signed by female profiles, focus on the physical attractiveness of the players.
How the TikTok algorithm works is something that has been talked about for some time. In 2021, The New York Times published an article about the equation that governed what to reward and what not to reward on the platform (likes, comments, play time…). And there is also research that says that, indeed, priority is given to what facial recognition identifies as a beautiful face. In fact, already in 2020 it was discovered that TikTok asked its moderators to limit the dissemination of images of ugly and poor people. When it became known, the platform said that those instructions were no longer in effect.
Furthermore, in the context of TikTok, comments on videos to attractive men in public places are quite common. In fact, a trend that has been on the platform for years carries the audio “this crazy woman won’t forget you” and almost always the object of desire is police officers.
Regarding this, Alonso does not believe that the appeal of rugby 7 boys has been entirely decisive for the success of the federation account on the platform. However, the first video that obtained millions of views – 4.6 – is that of the player Manu Moreno dancing The Macarena; and another video in the locker room in which the same player also appears without a shirt has 4.9 million. Other factors that may have actually added up is taking advantage of current trends, such as songs that are repeatedly repeated in videos for a week or two. An example of this is one with the use of The pantsby Lola Índigo, Omar Montes and las Chuches in one of the latest videos (976,000 views) or others with songs by Taylor Swift.
And how has this affected the team? Professionally, there are already brands that have approached the Federation after the impact and numbers they are having on the platform. In terms of sports, Alonso explains that it is still early to see figures, but they are noticing more monitoring: “Many more people are asking where the games are, because they want to see them.” He says that already in the tournament held in Madrid they noticed more mentions and impact on networks and that “speaking with the club environment, many people have come to be interested, to ask, to tell them: ‘I would like to sign up.'” And personally, the players are also noticing it: “They are delighted. They tell me that, the least, has gained a thousand or so followers on Instagram, there are others who have tripled their followers, who do not stop receiving messages, comments, follow-up requests.
You can follow The USA Print in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
_
