{"id":453501,"date":"2026-05-31T02:50:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T02:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/453501\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T02:50:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T02:50:38","slug":"world-cup-tim-payne-overtakes-all-blacks-in-followers-on-instagram-after-viral-world-cup-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/453501\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup: Tim Payne overtakes All Blacks in followers on Instagram after viral World Cup push"},"content":{"rendered":"

The All Blacks have jumped on the trend, posting their own video of players dancing to a song made about Payne while at Boca Juniors stadium with the caption \u201cNO PAYNE NO GAAAAIN\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AllAll Whites defender Tim Payne has become more popular than the All Blacks on Instagram. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n

Payne is on a trajectory that could see him become the most popular New Zealand athlete on social media<\/a>, with just two of the country\u2019s biggest names ahead of him. <\/p>\n

The defender is quickly closing in on former Black Caps captain Kane Williamson whose Instagram following is currently at 3.3 million people. <\/p>\n

He still has a long way to go to catch former UFC champion Israel Adesanya who has 8.2 million followers. <\/p>\n

But according to data from social media analytics website Social Blade, Payne has gained nearly 900,000 followers a day since Scrasini\u2019s video was posted so could become the most popular athlete from the country before the World Cup kicks off. <\/p>\n

Speaking after a recent training session<\/a>, Payne said he was surprised to see all the notifications coming through on his phone. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne afternoon, [I] just started getting a few random notifications and then looked on my Instagram and noticed that someone had tagged me in a video,\u201d Payne said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it was obviously in Spanish and my Spanish isn\u2019t very great, so I passed it on to my missus, who is fluent in Spanish and she was able to let me know what it was saying.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I think by the time I woke up the next morning there was hundreds of thousands of followers, so yeah, it was pretty crazy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Payne and the All Whites will kick off their World Cup campaign against Iran on June 16 at 1pm NZ time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The All Blacks have jumped on the trend, posting their own video of players dancing to a song…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,5263,230657,6726,8136,1738,16772,10542,26848,36862,42607,5504,71,78,8235,4791,3120,5812,130,111,43,139,69,90,47245,62589,10903,15400,131,46001,5143,5264,377],"class_list":["post-453501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-all","tag-argentine","tag-become","tag-blacks","tag-campaign","tag-character","tag-cup","tag-defender","tag-fifa","tag-followers","tag-following","tag-from","tag-in","tag-influencer","tag-instagram","tag-main","tag-make","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-overtakes","tag-payne","tag-popular","tag-push","tag-than","tag-tim","tag-viral","tag-whites","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}