The world’s premier footballing event in Brazil would be won by Mexico if the competition was based on social media audiences, according to programmatic advertising experts, RadiumOne UK.
The world’s premier footballing event in Brazil would be won by Mexico if the competition was based on social media audiences, according to programmatic advertising experts, RadiumOne UK.
In echoes of the London 2012 Olympic football final, Mexico would be surprise winners against the host nation with its enormous audience on Facebook swinging the result in its favour.
The Social Score methodology* devised by RadiumOne UK is based on a team’s total audience across leading global social networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram & Google+. The Social Score shows the relative reach of each nation’s football team (as of 11th June 2014) and reflects the potential audience that it can unlock for sponsors and commercial partners.
Despite falling short in the final, the host nation Brazil comes out well ahead of rivals that might be expected to excel in social media, including the big European nations and the USA where the social networks were created.
The English FA is making strong use of social platforms to engage with England fans as demonstrated by a creditable performance in finishing third ahead of the Germans.
Mexico is just one of five teams in the competition chalking up points by having a presence on all major social networks. Fellow Spanish speaking nations Colombia, Uruguay, Ecuador and Spain are the only other nations to use all the major platforms simultaneously.
However, despite Uruguay’s commitment to using all of the major social networks, it would be faced with a shock exit in the group phase – despite the passion of the fans and the ability of the team, its social presence is not enough to get into the last 16, being pipped at the post in the rankings by Nigeria. Elsewhere in Group D, England and Italy are building engaged audiences far more effectively on the selected platforms they have chosen to communicate on.
Rupert Staines, MD Europe, at RadiumOne comments: “Engaging the fan community socially is a hugely powerful ‘twelfth man’ for any team and the brands supporting them. With their respective reputations, it’s not a massive surprise to see the likes of Brazil, England and Germany fighting it out at the top of the table, thanks to their consistent approaches to fan engagement although Mexico is more surprising.”
“However, there are still too many footballing nations, sports & content rights holders overlooking the importance of fan engagement as part of their wider commercial strategies. They are not tapping into ‘Dark Social’ and missing out on a significant commercial revenue opportunity.”
“Take our partnership with the FA for example. They truly understand and action the commercial value from their 18m strong digital audience through RadiumOne’s platform tools.”
The results of the tournament, based on RadiumOne’s Social Score analysis would be as follows:
An infographic, showing the relative sizes of each of the 32 nations’ social audiences is below.
*The Social Score methodology devised by RadiumOne UK is based on a team’s total audience across leading social networks (including: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram & Google+).
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