Scoring big on the social playing field: World Cup 2014 data

The entire world spent the first days of June, and the weeks and months leading up to June 12 on the edge of their seats. Before the World Cup had even started.

Now that the World Cup is underway, we wanted to share a unique data resource we’ve been working on.

We’ve created a World Cup 2014 data visualization with our partner DAPP/FGV to provide a public platform that showcases key social data insights. In real time.

At Brandwatch, we know that what is being discussed on social media is a barometer for what the key issues, trends and stories are in the world. This couldn’t be more true for sporting events, especially this year’s World Cup 2014 tournament which kicked off on June 12 in São Paulo, Brazil.

The function of the data visualization platform is first and foremost as a resource of real-time data and insights for reporters covering the varied interest areas around the World Cup – political implications, environmental impact, the games themselves, even Panini sticker swapping, and of course Shakira and JLo.

We’re looking at top hashtags, total number of tweets, and analyzing an incredible amount of data to highlight the key stories we see are making headlines and dominating Twitter feeds around the world.

Plus, you can easily switch between English and Brazilian Portuguese language versions.

These are Our Insights at the top of the site, the stories that are making headlines with Brandwatch social data highlighting volume of mentions.

Much of the time, a story becomes a trending Twitter topic before it gets covered in the news.

We’ve got our finger on the pulse of all that World Cup data

This is just the beginning – we are going to continue adding new features in the coming first few weeks of the World Cup that will bring to life social media data on a more granular level.

Check back regularly for new updates and to click through deeper into the viz as we unveil new functionality.

Today we added in country-specific information that shows Top Twitterers (or Twitter users) and Topics (both monitored and organic), specifically around World Cup conversations around a certain country’s team.

Also within each team page are any of our Brandwatch Insights including interesting data, player injuries that are highly discussed and scrutinized, and any other developing story.

We’ve been tracking some interesting data about brand sponsors, and can see that Adidas is clearly winning the unspoken (yet quite overt) World Cup brand war.

• In the first 24 hours after the opening ceremony kicked off the World Cup, Adidas dominated World Cup-related mentions with 8,500 tweets around their brand, commercials, and products.
• Following in a close second is Sony with 7,400 mentions
• Hyundai/Kia has 4,200 mentions
• Coca Cola has 2,700 mentions
• McDonald’s has 2,100 mentions

Who is winning the World Cup Brand Sponsors war?

Looking at volume of mentions since June 12, it looks like Adidas is still holding on strong when it comes to quantity of mentions.

We kicked off the data viz with the intention to showcase breadth and volume of social data on Twitter from the moment the opening ceremony gets underway in Brazil until the winning team lifts the golden trophy in July. This will give us a laser-targeted look at exactly the volume and trends of online conversations during the World Cup.

We’ll be sharing our overall insights when the tournament ends.

With the political turmoil in Brazil thanks to metro strikes, protesting civilians, and a swelling anti-World Cup sentiment, social media sharing has been even more prevalent in this World Cup than in other global events.

Anyone can share their opinions, or photos live from riots, in only a matter of seconds, making social media not just a news disseminator but a ways of communication and amplification all around the World Cup, a soccer tournament.

It’s fascinating that the trending topics range from Neymar, to J.Lo and Pitbull’s performance, to protests and FIFA. Even Panini stickers, Shakira, and other peripheral subjects are mentioned and discussed, analyzed and RTed.

Social media has reshaped the way humans communicate and the way news organizations inform the public.

The World Cup this year is setting the stage to make our lives even more integrated with social than they already are, which is a significant amount.

For brands, interested parties, and relevant organizations, listening to and analyzing the data about the World Cup can be a major source of feedback and a great way to improve business practices.

They can uncover which of their own advertisements are the most popular, do competitive analysis by volume and sentiment, and even discover “white space conversations” that are related to their industry and to their interests, but that may not necessarily mention them.

Our data viz just scratches the surface of the type and depth of data that Brandwatch Analytics can dive into.

Journalists can use this platform to add interesting social data metrics that’s relevant to their coverage area – whether that’s the metro worker strikes in Brazil, anti-World Cup sentiment around the world, or simply to report the top hashtags of the day in relation to World Cup discussions online.

If you’re a journalist and there is a specific data point, graph, or metric you want to find out more about, just ask! ([email protected])