The Ripple Effect

Tom Daley won the Diving World Championships in Budapest on Sunday the 23rd of July. He caused a real shock in doing so, beating fancied Chinese divers in the process. But this was no fluke, a score of 590.95 would have been enough to win last years Olympics in Rio. An Olympic Gold medal still the big goal for the Plymouth 23 year old. It should be enough to make the BBC Sports Personality shortlist of nominees in a quiet sporting year.

Tom Daley's social media presence is huge. Only Joshua is in the same ball park with an impressive 4m followers on Instagram. Daley though is a well oiled PR machine. 2.65m twitter followers, 2.67m likes on facebook, 1.8m instagram followers and 485k subscribers on Youtube. A vlog of his world championship win has had 472k views. The diving sensation though has created more interest in himself outside of the pool, as in. 864k people have viewed his wedding video on youtube, the ad revenue from which will go to Switchboard LGBT charity. Daley married Dustin Lance Black this year, a Hollywood Screenwriter.

	Anthony Joshua	Jermain Defoe	Mo Farah	Chris Froome	Johanna Konta	Tom Daley
Twitter Followers	1.39m	959k	1.5m	1.37m	81k	2.65m
Facebook Likes	2.2m	?	1.12m	564k	33k	2.67m
Instagram Followers	4m	413k	608k	714k	86k	1.8m

Daley is a good looking chap who already had a huge following before coming out in 2013 as a gay man. This only heightened the interest in Daley and he's coped with the media really well it seems, coming across as really likeable. A trait I found is useful after getting Vardy wrong in 2016, backed in from big prices to a low of 2/1, the Leicester front man wasn't mapped with a pitiful vote on the night. 

Anthony Joshua is a Rolls Royce of a man and now a World Heavyweight Champion. His performance to beat Wladimir Klitschko was epic. Daley's husband couldn't have scripted the drama that was like something out of a Rocky movie. Joshua is priced accordingly though at 4/9 best. No rematch before the awards is possible as Klitschko is retired. Jermain Defoe won't make the shortlist in my opinion. His popularity is not in question after acts of kindness with the late Bradley Lowery but maybe another recognition is more suitable. Mo Farah and Chris Froome are in the same boat for me, massive negatives. Their superb achievements in their sports have yet to see them even place in BBC SPOTY despite Tour de France wins and 5/10k doubles at the last two Olympics. When Mo completed the double double in 2016 in Rio he could only garner 55k votes, nearly 200k short of Andy Murray. Froome similarly getting 37k votes in 2013 and 39k in 2015 winning his first two Tour de France titles and not even nominated last year when winning his third. Another blog could be written on why they haven't done well; I suspect not being born in the UK, residing much of the year abroad and suspicion around whether they are competing clean the big drawbacks. Peaty is at the top of his event in swimming but only received 11k votes in 2016 when breaking 2 world records on the way to his Olympic 100m Breaststroke gold. 

Since an all male contest in 2011 the organisers have changed who picks the shortlist and this probably ensures female representation. The field is not deep this year and neither is there many sporting events on for that to change. Andy Murray or Johanna Konta could win the US Open tennis but that's about it. If Tom Daley makes the shortlist and acknowledges it, his legion of fans and followers could cause a real upset on December 17th in Liverpool. Daley entered the pool with hardly any splash at all in July to make this possible, but the ripple effect may only be realised nearer the time when a likely viral campaign becomes apparent.    

Tom Daley is 100/1 with some big firms and top price 150/1 with another. He's much too big and could turn out to be the only real threat to Joshua for the gong.