According to the data that I have collected (April, 2019), Jonatan Christie (21) has the biggest number of followers on Instagram among badminton players, most likely because the last year, 2018, he appeared to be the first Indonesian sportsman to claim Asian Games men’s singles gold title in the last 12 years. Not to mention that badminton is Indonesia’s national sport.

Position / Player/Profile (Country) / Category / Followers

1. Jonatan Christie (INA) / MS / 1.9m
2. Saina Nehwal (IND) / WS / 1.4m 
3. PV Sindhu (IND) / WS / 1.3 m
4. Kevin Sanjaya (INA) / MD / 1.1m
5. Anthony Ginting (INA) / MS / 772k
6. Marcus Gideon (INA) / MD / 561k
7. Lee Chong Wei (MAS) / MS / 533k
8. Ratchanok Intanon (THA) / WS / 476k
9. Rian Ardianto (INA) / MD / 407k
10. Fajar Alfian (INA) / MD / 395k
11. Carolina Marin (ESP) / WS / 337k
12. Jwala Gutta (IND) / XD / 334k
13. Greysia Polii (INA) / WD / 301k
14. Goh Liu Ying (MAS) / XD / 299k
15. Viktor Axelsen (DEN) / MS / 270k
16. Tai Tzu Ying (TPE) / WS / 267k
17. Hendra Setiawan (INA) / MD / 187k
18. Debby Susanto (INA) / XD / 149k
19. Mohammad Ahsan (INA) / MD / 140k
20. Kidambi Srikanth (IND) / MS / 129k

The number of social media followers doesn’t mean that these are the most popular players in the world cause, well, China’s not participating, so I tried to make a linear regression model to predict the number of followers top Chinese players would have had, had they access to Instagram.

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