A mere 12 days ago, we took a look at social media’s potential impact on the World Cup – and it didn’t take very long to see its effects. A week or so into the tournament, it’s already apparent that the world wide web has gone soccer crazy, as the opening round of games has already been dubbed the biggest web event in history, surpassing that of Obama’s election win in 2008, and far exceeding any viewing/web usage during 2006 World Cup in Germany.
I’m sure many of you have been frustrated by Twitter’s Fail Whale in the last ten days, which is thanks to up to 3,000 #WorldCup tweets per second. If that doesn’t give you an indication of the popularity and global reach of the World Cup, I don’t know what else will. The site has given everybody an outlet for just about anything that’s happened during the tournament so far, whether it’s giving real-time updates during games, Kaka’s red card against the Ivory Coast, France’s mess of a team or simply following those Vuvuzelas (which is also the most downloaded mobile application).
Facebook, of course, can’t be left out of the mix. Their Sports on Facebook page has a leaderboard where fans can “Like” their favorite teams, and see which country has the most “passionate” football fans online. The top five countries? Chile, Honduras, Uruguay, Serbia and Slovenia – a combined internet population of around 12.9 million, compared to #28 USA’s 227.7 million. For smaller countries, it could very well be that the best outlet for them to view games and express their support is via the web. After all, Univision’s free online streaming has also reached record-breaking numbers.
Television coverage has reached record high numbers, viewing parties have increased and work productivity has diminished, but it’s really the web that has become the primary source of information and communication for everyone to talk about the world’s most popular sport. Along with watching every game on television, viewers are becoming more actively engaged using several different platforms (TV, radio, mobile, web) and for a longer period of time. So complementing the 16 million viewers who tuned to ABC for the USA-England game were the 1.7 million visitors to the ESPN website, not to mention the record number of Tweets.
First round games conclude this week, and we’ll soon find out the sixteen teams that make it through to the quarterfinals. As teams get eliminated, will we also see a decline in soccer-related internet usage? If the USA doesn’t make past the first round, how many of those USA supporters continue to watch the tournament and engage with fellow fans?