Though the 2014 World Cup action has begun to die down, now with only two teams remaining, the social media frenzy surrounding the tournament has not.
During Tuesday’s semi-final match, where Germany dominated host nation Brazil with a 7-1 victory, tweets reached a peak volume of 530,166 tweets per minute – making it the most talked about sporting event in Twitter history. The match itself generated 35.6 millions tweets total.
The Germany vs. Brazil match easily broke the previous record (from Super Bowl 2014) of 24.9 million tweets, with a maximum volume of 381,605 tweets per minute. Germany vs. Brazil also beat out the next-most tweeted World Cup game, the Brazil vs. Chile match, which earned 16.4 million tweets (TechCrunch).
Germany’s fifth goal, scored by Sami Khedria in the 29th minute, was the most talked about moment of the game: it provoked 580,166 tweets per minute (yet another new record). Toni Kroos’ pair of goals were not far behind with 497,425 and 508,601 tweets per minute.
Germany’s Miroslav Klose was the match’s most mentioned player, after becoming the all-time record goal scorer in World Cup history, with 16.
Though much of the game’s tweets were directed at the action, many saw the embarrassing loss for Brazil as an opportunity to poke fun at the country.
Social media chatter extends far beyond the matches: on Saturday night, Rio’s famous statue of Christ the Redeemer will be lit up in the colors of each of the finalist’s flags (Germany and Argentina) from 7-9 PM. To encourage even more participation, Twitter has created a campaign in which users can vote using #ArmsWideOpen followed by #GER or #ARG. Whichever team receives the most amount of tweets will see their colors will be lit the longest; the results will change in realtime as more fans vote.
For the past month, the World Cup has created quite a buzz around social media, sparking over 300 million tweets and over a billion Facebook interactions. By the end of Sunday’s championship match between Germany and Argentina, signifying the conclusion of the tournament, the 2014 World Cup is expected to be the biggest social media event ever.
