Sunday, July 15, 2018, striking the end of the World Cup, a remarkable tournament that had people glued to their screens over the summer. The world came together on Facebook and Instagram, with 383 million people and 272 million people, respectively, interacting across the platforms throughout the tournament.1 From June 14–July 15, our platforms were some of the best places to reach a global community of football fans as they shared their passion for the sport.
With France taking out the title, and with the event itself now complete, we can look back at the surrounding discussion, and the popularity of the World Cup across social platforms, in order to get some perspective on the popularity of both the event, and the sport, to better inform future marketing campaigns.
To help with this, Facebook has released a report which looks at the World Cup discussion across both Facebook and Instagram.
And there was certainly a lot of discussion to be had – according to Facebook:
“There are 400 million football fans on Facebook and 140 million football fans on Instagram. On Facebook and Instagram, football has 3x more followers than any other sport. Sports fans turn to Facebook and Instagram to see all angles of the sports they follow – for example, on Instagram, 94% of sports fans use the platform to see the personal side of athletes.”
Those are compelling stats outside of the World Cup, but the surrounding discussion from the event further underlines the popularity of soccer (or football, depending on where you’re from) across the two platforms. First off, on specific players and teams – Facebook has listed the top five in each category, based on platform mentions.
Most of those would come as little surprise to soccer fans – though I suspect Neymar may have got a few more mentions than normal due to his animated responses to various types of on-field contact. As an interesting addition to the data, Facebook has also included a listing of how many Stories were created around the World Cup, along with popular hashtags and overall discussion.
Facebook has repeatedly stated that ‘Stories are the future of social sharing’ and are on track to overtake the News Feed as the primary social sharing surface sometime this year. The inclusion of Stories-specific data seems to point to this again, and it’ll be interesting to see if Facebook includes similar insights for future events.
The stats further underline the potential of both Facebook and Instagram for sports-related businesses, and may help get you thinking about how you can incorporate them into your promotional strategy. While the World Cup is a special event, the numbers here show that soccer remains popular on both platforms, and that sports, in general has a significant place within the broader discussion.
Top tournament-related Facebook posts
- Leo Messi updates his profile picture
- Cristiano Ronaldo encourages his team and country at the start of the World Cup
- James Rodriguez shares his heartbreak after Colombia’s loss to England in the round of 16
Globally, over 270 million people on Instagram had 3 billion interactions related to the 2018 football tournament
THE MOMENT THAT MATTERED
Conversation spiked in the final when France won at the conclusion of the match (as ranked by highest spike in conversation on Facebook)
About the Author
Ramiz Al Jalbani
Ramiz is a content writer and a supply chain professional focused on IT and Trading. He has a wide experience of using the new and latest technology to trade businesses. A true Middle Eastern and South Asian Market insider, Ramiz shares his thoughts and opinions in the form of weekly essays that you can subscribe to via subscribing to blog of Ava IT Solutions or email. He has written numerous essays, articles and blogs which have been featured and quoted in different journals around the globe. The topics range from Digital Marketing, Social Media Trends, Technology Trends and Integration of Business Processes to IT.
