Many of us are big fans of rugby and with the Hong Kong Sevens coming up, we decided to leverage our proprietary analytics service WE twendz pro® to understand the Twitter influence around the tournament. We monitored the buzz carefully during the weeks prior to it and found that chatter gradually increased as we got closer to the week of the event.
When reviewing the data, we were able to determine that the conversations about USA and England teams were the most prolific on Twitter. They had the highest number of mentions, both in terms of the teams, as well as their individual players. Canada was a close third. Peter Tiberio (USA) presented a contest to win a USA Eagles jersey that earned him the top number of mentions.
At the same time, sponsors HSBC and Cathay Pacific appeared to leverage their association with the event the most, and managed to create chatter on Twitter and influence audiences the most, despite there being 15 supporting brands in total. In the lead up to the international sporting event, we found the Hong Kong Sevens reaching a total potential audience (over 1.25 million to be exact) that would have filled more than 31 stadiums, just with the global Twitter traffic – now imagine combining this with other online and offline platforms?
This has certainly given us a lot of food for thought as we wait in anticipation for the epic rugby battle this weekend.
