World Netball (WN) has today revealed the digital success of the Netball World Youth Cup 2025 (NWYC2025), which took place from the 19th – 28th September in Gibraltar, announcing a reach of over 27 million across the NWC and WN social media channels during this time.
The NWYC2025 was the first NWYC since 2017 due to covid and WN set out with the aim of maximising reach, in order to shine a light on the up-and-coming athletes competing for the top 18 U21 teams from around the world.
The biggest contributor to this reach was WN’s TikTok channel, launched in 2023, which alone reached just under 15 million accounts during the competition.
The most popular TikTok video featured eventual Player of the Tournament and NWYC2025 gold medallist Lily Graham during one of Australia’s early pool stage matches of the competition.
With this increase in reach also came a substantial growth in new followers and engagements, with the WN and NWC social media channels gaining 54,234 new followers and the content on these channels receiving over 1.1 million engagements.
Continuing to grow the global audience and prioritising the reach of the event, WN also live streamed all matches for free, live and on demand, on its OTT platform NetballPass, with the first five days available on its NWC YouTube channel too.
WN’s livestreaming strategy delivered significant visibility for the event, with the matches receiving a combined total of over 1.3 million views across both platforms between 19th September – 12th October.
On NetballPass, WN recorded a 38% month-on-month growth in registrations, as 23,954 new users signed up during the event.
This represented the largest month-on-month increase in NetballPass registrations in the past two years.
YouTube also gained an additional 10,000 new subscribers during the event dates.
Both YouTube and NetballPass helped WN reach a younger audience, with the highest viewership demographic on both platforms being 25–34-year-olds.
Overall, the NWYC2025 exceeded expectations, helping WN reach new audiences, showcasing the talent of the future netball stars and inspiring the next generation to come.