The World Cup effect on Twitter
Sergio Agüero, Neymar Jr., Giovani Dos Santos… many are the football stars that have seen their Twitter profiles improve notably because of the World Cup. Needless to say that the most important competition of the most popular sport attracts everyone’s attention, and football players are taking advantage of it by gaining exposure and increasing their popularity.
Twitter is a great example of how the effect the World Cup has on football players, and below these lines we can see a few examples of the impact that it had on their accounts. Performing well is a big plus to raise awareness but, in general, all World Cup participants have experienced the effect in some extend. The ones who are more benefited by the World Cup effect are those players who had social media profiles just above the average. Cristiano Ronaldo’s profile, being the best in its category, hasn’t experienced many changes. It is true that his performance during the World Cup hasn’t been outstanding, but it’s also true that his level of awareness is so high that he couldn’t potentially get many new followers at a time.
Since the World Cup started, players have experienced an increase of followers of around 5 times their usual daily average before the competition started.
Neymar Jr. had around 11,000 new followers each day before the World Cup. This number has gone up to 54,000 new followers per day since the World Cup began, with a total increase of 653,000 followers in only 12 days. That means that these days he is getting 5 times more new followers than he was getting before the World Cup.
Sergio Agüero went from 8,000 new followers daily to an astonishing 33,000; reaching almost 500,000 new followers in two weeks.
Gio Dos Santos is raising his profile during the World Cup thanks to his great performance. He went from 3,500 new followers per day to an impressive 22,000. That means that he is getting 6 times more new followers than he was before.
Mario Goetze is another good example of a player that is taking advantage of the World Cup. He was getting around 2,000 new followers per day before the competition started, whereas he is getting around 12,000 new followers today; 6 times better.
Fernandinho is one of these players whose (relative) numbers are astonishing. His Twitter account only registered 242,000 followers on July 11th and was getting 700 new followers per day. After two weeks of World Cup he already has more than 500,000 followers and is getting 24,000 new followers every day; 34 times better than before!! The fact that he still hasn’t played for Brazil, proves that simply being there makes a difference.
Last but not least, the Mexican goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa is the living proof that if you perform you get recognition. He had 750,000 followers on July 11th and he has over 1.1m followers after two weeks. He was getting around 2,000 new followers per day and his brilliant performance against Brazil granted him with 151,000 new followers in only one day!! 75 times his daily average!!!
These are just some examples of the impact that a global competition like a World Cup can have in the player’s social media profiles.