Fans Set Tweeting Record During 2012 Soccer Final
(SPORTS TECHNOLOGY)
When Spain defeated Italy on Sunday, there were no sports records broken per se, but an important record was broken by soccer fans in relation to the event. According to Twitter, users of the social networking site fired off more than 15,000 tweets per second during Spain’s fourth goal in the European Championship final.
The total global traffic on Twitter’s (News - Alert) platform peaked at 15,358 tweets per second, just as Spain made its fourth goal against Italy, ultimately defeating their rival 4-0.
In total, the game Twitter saw 16.5 million tweets worldwide throughout the game, and though it didn’t break any records, it was a sizeable and unexpected number.
Though Sunday’s match was very important to soccer fans the world over, social networking sites weren’t exactly expecting such traffic until the Olympic Games start in London in the coming weeks.
Twitter, along with other social media sites like Facebook (News - Alert), are reportedly set to see an even greater surge in usage than Sunday’s, during this summer’s 2012 London Olympic Games, which will run July 27 to August 12.
Even the players have been using sites like Twitter more frequently around important matches or sports events: retired Brazilian soccer star Pele tweeted at the end of the game on Sunday, congratulating Spain on their win.
Pele also tweeted that he was looking forward to the 2014 World Cup, which will be hosted in the soccer player’s native Brazil, where he is hailed as a national hero. We can only wonder how many people will be on Twitter by then!
Pele isn’t the only sports star on the site, either. Professional athletes are increasingly setting up accounts with Twitter in order to stay in touch with fans, as well as to promote viewership for their games.
The website, tweeting-athletes.com, has a catalog of all the players one can find on Twitter, organized by sport, country, team and surname. Soccer has a large amount of Twitter-users, with 875 in total as opposed to other sports like basketball, which has less than half that number, at 407.
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Edited by Braden Becker
