FIFA World Cup on Social Media

HOW TO BREAK SOCIAL MEDIA RECORDS, simple… Host a World Cup!

The global use of social media as a second screen was put on display like never before during the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the single most talked about social media event ever. From controversial plays to major injuries and, of course, incredible goals, the World Cup simply dominated Twitter and Facebook discussions for the last six weeks.

The Final Games

13th July—Final (Germany vs Argentina)

  • 1.3 million #WorldCup hashtag mentions on gameday (5.4% of total hashtag usage during World Cup)
  • 9.9 million hashflag mentions of both #GER and #ARG in the week prior to the final (5.2 million #ARG mentions and 4.7 million GER mentions)
  • A total of 2.9 million #ARG mentions on gameday
  • A total of 3.5 million #GER mentions on gameday
  • Although Argentina lost the final, Messi won the Golden Ball award for best player of the World Cup, helping him earn 2.3 million mentions on 13th July
  • The Golden Glove award for most outstanding goalkeeper went to the winning Keeper Manual Neuer helping him earn 330,000 mentions on social media.

The official FIFA app became the biggest sports-event app ever, with 28 million downloads, 451 million Facebook users were reached by FIFA’s page and it’s Instagram account rocketed from 42,000 followers to nearly 1 million in 31 days.

“This has been the first truly mobile and social World Cup,” FIFA President Sepp Blatter said. “The 1 billion attendance in the global stadium created the sense of togetherness the World Cup brings and the shared excitement that digital platforms offer.”
 
Certainly, the global appeal of the World Cup played a huge part in the tournament’s popularity. But the big numbers were clearly being bolstered by growing interest in the United States, one of the few nations where soccer isn’t, hands-down, the most popular sport.
 
During Sunday’s final, 10.5 million of the people engaged on Facebook were from the United States. Compare that to the 7 million people in Argentina and 5 million in Germany, the match’s actual participants, and you can see that U.S. interest in the tourney didn’t disappear when the American side bowed out.
 
In the 28 days before the U.S. team lost to Belgium in the knockout round, 36.7 million U.S. fans engaged with the World Cup’s online properties, a spokesman for the organization said. That’s 11.2% of the country’s population and accounted for 23% of the total activity during that time.
 
In all, 42 million U.S. fans visited FIFA Web and mobile tools during the entire tournament.
 
As the U.S. men’s team played its way out of a tough opening-round group that included Germany, Portugal and Ghana, U.S. Web users spent a total of 847 years and 143 days engaged with FIFA content. That’s more than soccer-crazy rivals Brazil, Germany, England and France combined.
 
“The popularity of the World Cup in the USA shows what a nation of sports lovers and enthusiasts they are,” Blatter said.
“The carnival atmosphere experienced at the World Cup viewing parties, where fans filled whole city blocks across the U.S., shows the passion that Jürgen Klinsmann’s side has instilled in U.S. sports fans.”