Emma Raducanu Instagram and Twitter following rockets by more than 1m during run to US Open title
Emma Raducanu is reaping the rewards of her US Open success with more than 1m new social media followers.
The teenage British tennis player, who won her first Grand Slam in New York on Saturday, began the tournament with around 400,000 Instagram followers. By Monday, that number had soared to more than 1.6m.
Raducanu has also seen her Twitter following grow by over 150,000 since beating Canadian Leylah Fernandez in the final, from 330,000 to more than half a million. She also has 12,000 likes and 14,000 followers on Facebook.
The 18-year-old from Bromley, who was born in Toronto to Romanian and Chinese parents, won 10 straight US Open matches, including three qualifiers, without dropping a set to take home a first prize of $2.5m.
Her victory over fellow teenager Fernandez at the Arthur Ashe Stadium attracted a peak audience of 9.2m on Channel 4, which sub-licensed the rights from Amazon Prime.
The social following gained at the Grand Slam will only help raise Raducanu’s profile as sponsors flock to be associated with the sport’s newest star.
Raducanu addressed Chinese tennis fans in Mandarin on a clip uploaded by US Open chiefs to social media platform Weibo. The post has been watched more than 200m times.
Instagram has roughly 1bn active monthly users and has helped sporting influencers such as Lewis Hamilton and Naomi Osaka build a brand that sponsors are keen to leverage.
Twitter has more than 350m monthly active users, while Facebook has in excess of 1bn users.
Raducanu only joined the women’s elite tour full-time earlier this year and made her Grand Slam debut at Wimbledon, where she was given a wild card entry and reached the fourth round.