Inter Milan Figured Out the One Social Media Move Nobody Wants to Make: Posting Less

Inter Milan did the thing every social team threatens to do and almost never actually does: it posted less on purpose. Over the past year, under brand and marketing director Luca Adornato, the club cut its posting volume by roughly a third, and instead of the numbers cratering, followers grew 20% year over year, impressions rose 43%, and video views climbed 33%. The club crossed 100 million total followers in early August and ranked third among pro sports teams in September engagement, with 19 million-plus interactions across roughly 800 posts, itself a 41% jump.

The strategy is not complicated, which is exactly why it is hard to execute inside most marketing organizations: Adornato's team stopped chasing volume and started building for the platform in front of them, prioritizing on-pitch action, running TikTok and YouTube content for younger, international fans while geotargeting Facebook for older regional audiences, and picking collaborations with actual cultural weight, including a Spike Lee film for the Club World Cup, Pink Floyd merchandise with Sony Music Italy, and a debut at Fanatics Fest NYC. "Targeting all the content in order to be really distinctive, to be authentic, and to be interesting," is how Adornato put it, which is the kind of sentence that sounds obvious until you look at how much of the internet is still built on posting everything and hoping.

The timing is not an accident either. Inter Milan is owned by Oaktree Capital Management, an American investment fund with obvious reasons to want the club's brand equity growing in the US, Asia, and the Middle East, not just its trophy case. A football club cutting content volume to grow its numbers is a small story. A private equity owner discovering that discipline beats output as a growth strategy is the actually interesting one.

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →