Digital Breakthrough: Nordic Combined’s Social Media Boom

Over the past four seasons, Nordic Combined has undergone a remarkable digital transformation. What started as a modest social media presence in the 2021-22 World Cup season has evolved into a fast-growing, multi-platform ecosystem, marked by sharply rising reach, engagement, and follower numbers.

Data spanning from the 2021-22 season through January 2026 reveals consistent progress across all key metrics, with a decisive breakthrough beginning in the 2024-25 season. Since then, growth has accelerated at an unprecedented pace.

Explosive follower growth

Nordic Combined’s social media audience has grown every single season since 2021-22.

The discipline closed the 2021-22 season with 33.7k followers. This rose to 40.4k in 2022-23, representing almost 20% growth, and climbed further to 46.2k in 2023-24, an additional increase of around 14%.

The real turning point arrived in the 2024-25 season. In just one year, the total number of followers jumped to 74.9k, an increase of more than 60%. Momentum has not slowed since. By January of the current 2025-26 season, Nordic Combined had already reached 101k followers, adding nearly 35% in only a few months.

Overall, Nordic Combined has almost tripled its social media following since the 2021-22 season, underlining the scale of this digital leap.

Reach expands to a whole new level

Reach figures clearly illustrate the magnitude of the transformation.

In the 2021-22 season, Nordic Combined content reached 8.1 million users. This grew to 10.5 million in 2022-23, before dipping slightly to 9.3 million in 2023-24 during a transitional phase.

Everything changed in the 2024-25 season. Reach surged to 33.0 million, an increase of more than 250% compared to the previous season. This marked a decisive shift into a new tier of digital visibility for the discipline.

The current season has carried this momentum forward. By the end of January, the 2025-26 season had already recorded 30.3 million in reach, nearly matching the total reach of the entire previous season with several months still to go.

Engagement rises with scale

Engagement has followed a similarly powerful upward trend.

After recording 281k engagements in 2021-22, interaction levels fell to 182k in 2022-23. Engagement rebounded strongly in 2023-24, reaching 255k, an increase of almost 40% year-on-year.

The 2024-25 season set an entirely new benchmark. Total engagements climbed to 696k, nearly three times more than the previous season. By January of the current season, engagement had already reached 492k, representing around 70% of last season’s total.

While the average engagement rate has gradually stabilized at around 4%, the sharp increase in reach has driven a dramatic rise in overall interaction volume.

TikTok, storytelling, and shared content as growth engines

A key driver behind the 2024-25 surge was the launch of the Nordic Combined TikTok channel. In its very first season, TikTok quickly became one of the strongest platforms in terms of reach, with several posts generating between 880k and 1.6 million views.

Beyond competition coverage, dedicated storytelling projects played an important role in expanding the audience. The Overlooked documentary introduced a narrative-driven approach that attracted viewers beyond the existing fan base and encouraged deeper engagement.

At the same time, Combined for Change, a sustainability initiative developed together with Viessmann and the Local Organizing Committees, showcased concrete efforts to make Nordic Combined events more sustainable. By linking sport with sustainability topics of growing relevance - like the Snowmorrow campaign launched during the FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships in Planica 2024 - the initiative increased content relevance and contributed to the strong reach achieved during the season.

This growth has been further amplified by the availability of high-quality competition clips and official photos from all FIS World Cups. Optimized for mobile use and fully rights-compliant, this content is delivered quickly and efficiently via the FIS Content Exchange Platform (CXP), enabling fast, consistent, and wide-reaching distribution across channels.

The impact of CXP is already clearly visible in the 2025-26 season. By mid-January, approximately 250 social media posts featuring CXP content had been published by athletes and NSAs. Around 60 different Nordic Combined athletes have actively used the platform so far, making Nordic Combined one of the top disciplines within FIS when it comes to the use of shared footage. Athlete feedback has been very positive, underlining the value of easy access to high-quality, ready-to-use content.

Instagram and TikTok are the primary channels where this footage is used, reinforcing the discipline’s strong focus on mobile-first, short-form storytelling.

A new digital reality

Compared to the 2021-22 season, Nordic Combined now operates on a completely different digital scale. The discipline reaches far more users, generates significantly higher engagement, and continues to grow its audience at an accelerated pace.

With increased content output, a balanced platform strategy, the successful introduction of TikTok, impactful special projects, and the support of the FIS Content Exchange Platform, Nordic Combined has firmly entered a new digital era – and is well positioned to continue this rapid growth in the coming seasons.