Interesting Insights: The World Cup 2014 Retrospective

This year we teamed up with Brazilian think tank FGV to keep a close eye on Twitter conversations around World Cup 2014.

We provided real-time analytics and insights in our data visualization, gathering and showcasing Twitter data around the most mentioned topics, games, players, brands, and even tracking “social performance rankings” that pitted each country’s earned social media mentions volume against their total player value, GDP, population, and more.

After the final game this week, our Insights team drilled down into our data on the top social stories that developed online around the World Cup.

Here, our infographics showcase some of the most surprising, intriguing and funniest insights from World Cup 2014 as they played out on Twitter.

11th June / Anti World Cup vs FIFA

GENERAL| Mentions of “anti-Fifa” peaked at the start of the tournament, then quickly died down. This topic only resurfaced once more, around June 23.

13th June / Lackluster opening ceremony; short but not sweet

GENERAL| The most active nations commenting on the opening ceremony were the USA followed by users from the UK, Indonesia and Thailand and South Africa, the former hosting country.

 

16th June / Spain’s shocker

SPAIN| While the world was shocked by Spain’s defeat early on in the games, Twitter was more preoccupied with Neymar’s girlfriend.

Bruna Marquezine’s photo tweet of her and Neymar with a message of love on “this special day when you get to live out your dreams” was the most RTed Twitter post of the day with 1,184 RTs and 2,669 favorites.

 

18th June / And the winner is…

GENERAL| Based on the conversation buzz levels, Tweeters were favoring Brazil to win, followed by Germany, Argentina, or Colombia.

In the end, social media’s second-most predicted winner went on to win it all in the 2014 World Cup.

20th June / Who’s tweeting?

 

GENERAL | The ladies loved to talk about Messi, while male Twitter users chose to chat the most about German team footballers Klose and Lahm.

24th June / Luis Suarez

 

URUGUAY| Sentiment analysis of the infamous bite reveals that the conversation is far more neutral than negative.

#BanSuarez failed to go viral after just 4,480 mentions, while Snickers had garnered over 35,000 RTs for its bite-related meme.

England Out

ENGLAND| UK Tweeters kept their sense of humour in defeat.

The Queen was a common theme on Twitter with mentions of Her Majesty in 4% of posts by UK consumers, including numerous jokes including punishing the team for their poor performance.

 

30th June / Netherlands benefit from water break

NETHERLANDS | The most RTed author was famous statistician Nate Silver, who commented on the fact that Qatar, site of the 2020 World Cup, was 30 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than Brazil.

His post was shared 1,612 times and favorited 802 times.

 

1st July / Adidas – top sponsor

GENERAL| Beats by Dre saw more mentions in association with the World Cup than official FIFA sponsors Emirates and Sony.

This was largely driven by a spike in conversations on June 5th and 6th, on the reveal of their “Game before the Game” TV advert, as well as mentions of FIFA banning players using Beats by Dre in favor of sponsor brand Sony’s headphones.

 

2nd July / Howard is Number 1

USA| Meme central: The internet exploded with Tim Howard memes featuring the beloved US goalie saving more than just goals, including the dinosaurs from a meteor, the Titanic from sinking, an egg from sperm, and even stopping Mufasa’s fatal fall (Lion King reference!).

 

4th July / Overpass in Brazil collapses

GENERAL| Conversation on Twitter around the World Cup dramatically turned its attention away from games and players to focus on the bridge collapse in Belo Horizonte on July 3rd.

The incident was the top trending topic of the day, with over 10,000 mentions (relating to the World Cup) and rose as the rest of the world woke up to the news.

 

7th July / A blow to Neymar’s spine and Brazil’s hopes

BRAZIL| Despite Neymar’s spinal injury on July 4th, his game-winning goals is what he’ll be remembered for in World Cup 2014.

His goals against Croatia on June 12th and against Cameroon on June 23rd drove similar volumes of mentions per day as the spinal injury, and saw more Tweets in real time (during the game’s broadcast) than the accident itself.

 

9th July / Germany’s huge win garners huge traffic

GERMANY| Brazil suffered a record-breaking defeat in their own country, you’ll know unless you’ve been living in a cave!

Germany won the match 7-1, more goalscorers than there was room for listing their names on the television display.

 

14th July / Final – Germany wins for the 4th time

GERMANY| The most RTed tweet wasn’t about the final game, but from NBA star Lebron James, after he tweeted an image of an almost naked fan running across the field.

All data used for this infographic was gathered and analyzed by Brandwatch. Want to see what insights you can pull about your brand? Get a demo today.