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31/05/2013 by
3938 views

How Social Media-Crazy Football Fans Really Are? (Infographic)

Football is getting bigger on social media each new season. An infographic created by the UEFA shows how passionate and social media-crazy football fans really are.

Screen Shot 2013-05-30 at 6.07.59 PM

The Champions League final between Bayer Munich and Borussia Dortmund resulted in an estimated global average audience of 150 million and a projected global unique reach of over 360 million viewers.

It might’ve been hard to top last year’s Twitter activity surrounding the Champions League final – users sent 32,097 tweets-per-minute at the peak of the game.

But this year’s match proved superior in terms of social buzz: after the game, football fans tweeted at a rate of more than 117,000 tweets per minute.

Now that’s huge!

As for Facebook, Indonesia (also real football fanatics), Mexico and Brazil were to most active countries. Google+ is getting bigger for the UEFA as well.

Fans from around the world engaged in a live hangout around the match, during which former European Cup winners Ian Rush and Karl-Heinz Riedle took time to drop in and chat.

For the first time, fans voted for the man of the match, Robert Pirès, via Google+ and Twitter.

UEFA Champions League final ambassador Steve McManaman, Patrik Andersson, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Pirès all featured in earlier hangouts.

See the full infographic here:

INFOGRAPHIC-UEFA-Champions-League-final-proves-global-pulling-power

My Opinion?
The latest Facebook analytics, provided by Sports New Media, reveal that UEFA’s pages are growing at a faster rate than every other sports league in the world.

Along with the UEFA Champions League, the UEFA Europa League and UEFA.com pages have grown by over 100% over the last five months, while the official UEFA Women’s Champions League page has enjoyed 248% surge over the same period.

Although the UEFA is very active on social, I still believe there is a lot to win in terms of a combination of unique content and new, upcoming social networks like Tumblr, Vine and Instagram and not just aiming for the main stream (social) channels.

The Dutch official Fan club OnsOranje for example, has recently started a Tumblr diary, specifically for fans who want to follow the Dutch Under 21 squad during the European Championship in Israel.

For the first time in history, the players actually are allowed to update their social media during the tournament, except on match days.

The Tumblr diary contains a mix from social content such as Tweets, Instagram photos and Vines from players and the OnsOranje editorial team, which can been on onsoranje.tumblr.com but also on Facebook.

The diary show some real ‘behinds the scenes content’, in some cases also from the player’s point of view.

A simple solution and known solution for many brands, a revolution in (Dutch) football.

Check out some of the content from the diary:

 

The Dutch Under 21 Team arriving on Ben Gurion Airport, Israel (source: onsoranje.tumblr.com)

What About You?
Are you amazed about the UEFA facts and figures? Do you think there’s still a lot to win for them regarding their online and social efforts?

And what about the Dutch Under 21 diary, do you believe this kind of content marketing will eventually become main stream for football clubs? Or is it logic to work with ‘main stream social channels?

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About the Author
Laurens Bianchi is an independent online marketing professional from the Netherlands and has been blogging on ViralBlog since 2008. Currently Laurens is also the Social Media Consultant for the Royal Dutch Football Association.

Source: UEFA, Natursports / Shutterstock.com

Background info: Laurens Bianchi (author) is professionally involved with the diary of the Under 21 Dutch National team.

 

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