June 11th 2010 couldn’t have come quick enough. With the Premiership finishing in May; the World Cup fills the void that we normally have to face until August. It is also the opportunity that we get to see the world’s greatest footballers on the biggest global football stage and all 5760 minutes of football are compacted into just one month.
We’ve now seen all 32 teams play once but what affect has this had on social media? Well quite a bit actually. Statisticians from Google, Nielsen and the like have been compiling data, not analysing the action specifically on the pitch but what buzz the tournament has been created around the World Wide Web.
Google Insights for Search has identified that there was a spike in the number of people searching for World Cup tickets, predominantly in South Africa, initially in April and then between May and the start of the tournament people have been going crazy to get tickets.
The same software also identified that out of five faces that will dominate the World Cup, Ronaldo (the winker) has been by far the most searched for player over the past 12 months. Understandably there were spikes in the number of searches in the past couple of weeks when news broke that Didier Drogba broke his arm and Arjen Robben was injured in training.
Following his mistake in England’s first game Robert Green’s quickly became very popular around the English language social media websites with over 11% of messages that referred to the game commenting on his performance (or howler to be more specific), followed by Wayne Rooney (9%) and the American goalkeeper Tim Howard (6.7%). The disappointment of the result for English fans was noted by a 20% decline in social media buzz whilst for the Americans who viewed the game as a success, the buzz about their national team increased by over 750%, it is probably a good thing now that Fabio banned the use of social media websites prior to tournament beginning last week. (Source: Nielsen Market Research)
In regards to the effect that the World Cup has had on specific businesses, Experian Hitwise data has identified that searches for South African Airways increased 129% between the 5th and 12th June, which follows suit with the 85% increase in searches for flights to South Africa in the past month. Finally, according to their research, 1 in 150 searches in the United Kingdom were related to the World Cup in the past week.
We will keep taking note on the impact that the tournatment has on the internet over the coming weeks. Fingers crossed come the 12th July there is an explosion in the number of searches for England World Cup Success!
