World CupSocial Trends

How social media behaviors evolved between the start and end of the World Cup

GWI TRENDS Q3 2014

SETTING THE SCENE

NOTES ON METHODOLOGY

KEY HEADLINES

During the FIFA World Cup, GlobalWebIndex surveyed social networkers in the UK, USA and Brazil to understand how, when and where they were engaging with the tournament – from the platforms they were using to the topics they were talking about.

By conducting research at both the start and end of the competition, GWI was able to track how activities in the three countries changed between the group and knockout stages and – crucially – how a team being eliminated from the tournament impacted behaviors within the social space.

GWI surveyed members of its Real-Time Panel, comprising online adults aged 16-64 who have previously completed GlobalWebIndex’s core questionnaire.

There is a strong cross-over between the two waves of research, with many of the same individuals completing both surveys.

• Conversations with friends (53%) and Facebook (46%) were the biggest sources of World Cup news at the end of the tournament –

reflecting the dominance of “informal” sources over “official” outlets like news channels and websites.

• Facebook was by far the most popular social platform, with Twitter in second place. WhatsApp was a particularly strong force in Brazil

due to the desire to send messages in real-time.

• Across the board, there is a strong “knockout” effect in evidence; once a national team was eliminated from the competition, networkers

were less likely to check social platforms during matches or post their own comments in the online space – an obvious reflection of a

corresponding dip in offline engagement/interest. Together with the host-nation effect, this explains why Brazilian figures by the end of

the tournament were typically the highest.

• Networkers were twice as likely to look at other people’s comments as post their own – demonstrating just how big the “passive”

segment of the social audience has become.

Our Pre-Tournament wave of research was completed on the first day of the World Cup (June 12th), with the following samples:

Brazil 231UK 421USA 414

Our Post-Tournament wave of research was completed during the final weekend of the competition (Friday 11th to Monday 14th July), with the following samples:

Brazil 190UK 501USA 500

WORD-OF-MOUTH AND FACEBOOK THE TOP SOURCES FOR WORLD CUP NEWSThroughout the duration of the tournament, informal conversations with friends were central to how people kept up-to-date with information about the World Cup; more than 50% listed this as a source for news, putting it in pole position. Perhaps unsurprisingly, word-of-mouth was most integral to World Cup behaviors in host-nation Brazil, where the buzz surrounding matches reached its highest.

Question: Which of the following sources do you plan to use to stay up-to-date with World Cup news? / Which of the following sources did you use to stay up-to-date with World Cup news? /// Source: GlobalWebIndex Real-Time Panel, June & July 2014 /// Base: 1066 (Tournament Start) and 1191 (Tournament End) internet users aged 16-64 who watched the World Cup in the UK, USA and Brazil

World Cup: Top Sources for News

Across all three countries, it’s clear that Facebook played a major role too; although it saw a very slight dip between the start and the end of the tournament, it was still nearly 50% of the World Cup audience who were using the social networking giant as a source for news about the competition. Clearly, then, it was more “informal” sources of news that were the top destinations for viewers.

Compared to Facebook, Twitter saw a slightly more pronounced decline as the tournament played out. Some context for this is provided by the value attached to conversations with friends (above); people were keenest to see what this group were saying about the World Cup, and contact networks on Facebook are typically more “personal” than the equivalents on Twitter. So too is there a distinction to note between Twitter’s role during matches – where it was more prominent (see below) – and its function here as a general news/information platform throughout the entire tournament.

There was also a “knockout” effect at work; Facebook’s role as a news source dipped in the UK, where England made an early exit, but remained stable in the US – where the team performed well and progressed to the knockout stages – and actually increased in Brazil (who made it to the semi-finals). This reflects a wider trend evident from GWI’s World Cup research: the longer a team stayed in the competition, and the better their overall performance, the more likely people were to continue discussing/engaging with the World Cup inside Facebook. In a sense, Facebook acted as a microcosm of wider World Cup behaviors; as people talked about their teams less in day-to-day life, so we saw the levels of noise decrease inside their social networks.

As the World Cup progressed, we also saw a slight movement away from specialized new sources towards general television coverage – hence the dips recorded for outlets such as sports new websites/channels (both down by around ten percentage points), compared to rises for TV news (38% to 42%) and TV highlights (28% to 32%). In part, this is because people were keen to stay in-touch with news about the bigger matches towards the end of the competition. But the “knockout” effect is present here too; Brazilians were still engaging with the more specialized sources right to the end of the tournament, whereas interest faded in both the UK and USA. Once a fan’s team was out, they were more likely to turn to general coverage rather than invest time in more detailed stories. It’s hardly surprising that fans of the country with the worst national performance (England) saw some of the biggest declines.

NETWORKING BEHAVIORS: PEOPLE TWICE AS LIKELY TO BROWSE RATHER THAN POST

If we turn our attention to real-time behaviors – those activities that people were doing as they watched matches – the importance of the social space is clear once again. By the end of the World Cup, just over two thirds of networkers said they were checking platforms to see what people were saying about the game.

Real-time browsing increased by 10% in Brazil, with 3 in 5 viewers checking what people were saying. In contrast, this behavior faded in both the UK and USA (particularly in the latter – from 51% to 42% – reflecting a slight drop in interest once the USMNT’s better-than-expected run of games came to an end).

This pattern is in fact reflected across all of the activities monitored in our charts; Brazilian engagement levels either stayed the same or increased, whereas English and American behaviors dropped off a little. Once again, this is the “knockout” effect at work.

In all three countries, people were much more likely to browse networks during games rather than actively post things themselves (typically by a ratio of around 2:1). A number of trends drove this – from the practical (it’s quicker and easier to simply check a network instead of post something) to the slightly more passive ways in which people are engaging with major social platforms more generally, especially via mobile (with people becoming increasingly less likely to actively interact with networks: see GWI Social for more detail on this).

Towards the end of the chart, there are two key behaviors which were much more prominent in Brazil than elsewhere. The first is the increased importance of real-time messaging during games; Brazil was around 20% ahead of the other two countries for this activity by the end of the tournament – providing some context for the success of WhatsApp in this nation (see below).

Although a minority behavior overall, it’s also worth noting that Brazilian viewers were three times as likely as their American and English counterparts to take a “selfie” during games – an area where an obvious host-nation effect is in evidence.

Question: Thinking about the FIFA World Cup matches you plan to watch, which, if any, of the following are you likely to do as the games are happening? / Thinking about the World Cup matches that you watched, which, if any, of the following did you do during the games? /// Source: GlobalWebIndex Real-Time Panel, June & July 2014 /// Base: 1066 (Tournament Start) and 1191 (Tournament End) internet users aged 16-64 who watched the World Cup in the UK, USA and Brazil

Activities During World Cup Matches

FACEBOOK WAS THE WORLD CUP NETWORK OF CHOICEDespite a number of new Twitter records being set during the World Cup, it’s clear that Facebook was still the biggest go-to point – even for real-time networking activities taking place during matches.

Question: Which of the following social networks or messaging services are you likely to use while watching live FIFA World Cup games? / Which of the following social networks or messaging services did you use while watching live FIFA World Cup games? /// Source: GlobalWebIndex Real-Time Panel, June & July 2014 /// Base: Social networkers among 1066 (Tournament Start) and 1191 (Tournament End) internet users who watched the World Cup aged 16-64 in the UK, USA and Brazil

Top Social Services During the World Cup

Overwhelming majorities of social networkers in all three countries were in fact taking to Facebook as they watched games, compared to around a third for Twitter. In part, this is a reflection of Facebook’s far higher membership and active user bases. But it also demonstrates just how ingrained the service still is within our wider social networking activities; it remains the “hub” which connects so many of our social behaviors, something which gives obvious pause-for-thought against any claims that the social networking giant has lost its relevance.

Between the start and end of the tournament, all of the social platforms tracked in our chart saw decreases. The “knockout” effect is highly relevant here; declines were least pronounced in Brazil where the national team remained in the tournament for the longest period of time. But this is also being driven by changing perceptions among the World Cup audience – i.e. the platforms that people expected to use to discuss games versus those they actually engaged with as matches happened.

Further down the list, WhatsApp rose from fifth place at the start to third by the end, having overtaken both Google+ and Instagram. It was only a minor destination inside the UK and US but enjoyed a very strong level of engagement in Brazil – indicating once again how important this purchase was for Facebook in terms of the coverage it provides in fast-growth markets.

Elsewhere, it’s also worth noting the strong levels of social engagement among USMNT viewers: by the end of the tournament, four fifths of American viewers were discussing games on Facebook and nearly two fifths were using Twitter (with the figure for the latter being the highest across all of the three countries in question).

In fact, the tournament-end figure for Facebook in the US is only just behind that of Brazil. This is in line with trends recorded by Fanzo – an iOS app which analyzes “fan-trending news in real-time” in order to “curate content from millions of people in social media, generating the hottest news, photos, videos and memes for users on their favorite teams – assigning scores to content based off engagement, which [allows us to] show the hottest teams being talked about and compare them to each other.”

When GWI spoke to the app’s co-founder, Dana Dyksterhuis, she noted that “the USMNT are crazy active in social media, generating a Fanzo Score of more than 6-million for the team channel at time of writing. Compare that to Belgium with 219k and Germany with 223k.”

With viewing figures from America showing that US games attracted record audiences, it’s clear that this is the first World Cup where soccer has become a truly mainstream interest in America – something of obvious importance for future international tournaments.

FINAL RESULTS AND GOALS DROVE THE MOST ONLINE CONVERSATIONSWhen we surveyed our Real-Time Panels at the start of the tournament, social conversations were being dominated by final results (74%) and goals (73%).

If anything, though, it was the diversity of the topics being discussed that was the most striking trend; half of the audience were critiquing the performance of particular players, over a third were discussing half-time results and about a fifth were taking to social platforms to talk about tackles, referees and yellow/red cards (especially in the UK). Predictably, the pre-match build-up created a much bigger buzz in the host nation: 50% in Brazil were talking about this online, more than 2.5 times higher than in the UK or USA.

Question: Thinking about the FIFA World Cup matches you plan to watch, which of the following things are you likely to post messages about on a social network? /// Source: GlobalWebIndex Real-Time Panel, June 2014 /// Base: Social networkers among 1066 internet users aged 16-64 who were watching the World Cup in the UK, USA and Brazil

Real-Time Social Conversation TopicsSubsequently, GWI continued to analyze Twitter behaviors among its Real-Time respondents in Brazil, the US and UK – as well as among its online panels in all 32 of its markets – to monitor the topics that people were most likely to talking about as the World Cup unfolded.

As some of our highlighted tweets here illustrate, goals and final results remained the most popular conversation drivers – with GWI’s Twitter users most likely to discuss specific players or incidents when their own team was playing. High-profile games as well as unexpected or particularly dramatic results were also major talking points.

Overall, it’s in fact clear that the World Cup dominated Twitter conversations among GWI respondents during the months of June and July – this subject accounts for nine of the top ten “trends” on Twitter (defined as subjects which were “trending” on the service). And with Wimbledon being the only non-World Cup subject to feature on the list, Twitter’s importance as a sports discussion forum is patently plain to see.

Top 10 Twitter trends among

GWI’s Real-Time Panel during the World Cup 2014

(12th June - 13th July 2014)

Top 10 World Cup teams

(by mentions/trending) among GWI’s Real-Time

Panel:

Top 10 World Cup players

(by mentions/trending) among GWI’s Real-Time

Panel:

Top 10 World Cup managers (by mentions/

trending) among GWI’s Real-Time

Panel:

Top 10 non-World Cup-related trends

among GWI’sReal-Time Panel:

#worldcup Brazil Suarez Van Gaal Wimbledon

Brazil England Messi Scolari Ramadan

England Argentina Neymar Del Bosque Netflix

Argentina Germany Ronaldo Herrera Tumblr

Germany Spain Rooney Capello 4th of July

Suarez Portugal Robben Prandelli WhatsApp

Spain Chile Sanchez Roy Hodgson Transformers

Wimbledon Uruguay David Luiz Fernando Santos Starbucks

Portugal Costa Rica James Rodriguez Niko Kovac Xbox

Messi Ghana Tim Howard Ottmar Hitzfeld Happy Father's Day

What were members of GWI’s Real-Time Panel Talking about on Twitter?

For more trends and data, please download our reports on World Cup Viewing Behaviors and World Cup Sponsor Recognition Levels.

www.globalwebindex.net

Jason ManderHead of Trends

E jason@globalwebindex.net /// T +44 20 7731 1614A Bedford House, 69-79 Fulham High Street,

London, SW6 3JW, England