Record stats set to get even better!

Already on on course to celebrate the competition's fiftieth anniversary campaign with their best ever stats, the official Twitter account alone attracted its biggest audience of the season and third highest of all time on Easter Saturday before eclipsing those numbers on Bank Holiday Monday with more than 300,000 views!

The Twitter account is expected to soar past 20 million hits by the time the play-off finals kick-off in May and NPL social media officer James Heyes is looking forward to breaking even more records over the final days of the historic 2017-18 season after collating the latest figures.

According to Heyes, @evostikleague attracted a total of 2.74 million hits in March, up on last season's 2.3 million for the same period. He is putting the surge down to fans logging on for the latest fixture news after a soggy Easter and the final weekend of online voting for the EVO-STIK NPL Show's 2018 'Fans' Player of the Year' accolade before the polls closed on Monday night.

Heyes said: "I thought our highlights would all be about Saturday being the biggest audience of the season so far and the third biggest of all time but Monday fully eclipsed it! At the last count we had over 300,000 views and I think our fans played a big part in the most views we've ever had on Twitter, either by voting for their award before the deadline of a minute to midnight or by checking for rearranged fixtures.

"I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of this month and the end of the season with so many games and relegation and promotion issues still to be decided. Our previous record was on the final day of last season when we had 297,000 views and then 295,000 for the play-off semi-finals and another 230,000 for the finals. With the way things are going, I'm expecting us to beat all those and hopefully by a long way!"

He added: "Our reach has carried on growing all season, not only on Twitter but on Facebook and other platforms like Vole and Snapchat, and much of that is down to our club partners. Well done to everybody for their part in promoting the league and making sure we are leading way as a competition. Like our official website, our stats continue to be far more impressive than those of rival competitions in Non-League and I could't be prouder or more excited with this turning out to be our best season yet."

The EVO-STIK League's social media channels have been soaring since the season kicked off last August thanks to a series of online initiatives to celebrate the competition’s milestone birthday. Led by title sponsors EVO-STIK's Digital Challenge to hand out £5,000 in prize money to the most media savvy clubs, they've also included the NPL50 public poll to choose the competition's top 100 playing legends and managers for inclusion in a new book charting the league's proud history.

Entitled '50 Glorious Seasons - A History of the Northern Premier League 1968-2018’ and currently being written by the EVO-STIK League's official historian Dominic McKenzie, the book is due out at the end of the season.

Follow us: @evostikleague on Twitter | Facebook www.facebook.com/evostikleague