As of yesterday evening (in our local time zone) we now know that after 28 days of World Cup fever the entire world will be watching Argentina and Germany play in the finals.
This year’s World Cup has a been a very exciting one. Both in terms of the matches played and also the social media activity that has been going on during the tournament. This World Cup has seen a flurry of social media activity from fans cheering on their team to some incredible memes based on events during the tournament.
But what has the social activity around our two final teams looked like? That’s what we wanted to find out as we get set for the final match this weekend. So, we took to MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics software, to explore the mentions of Germany and Argentina.
The first thing we did for this quick analysis was to look at number of mentions of each team from the start of the World Cup (on June 12) up until yesterday. Here we found that Argentina has a greater share of voice across social media channels beating out Germany 61% to 39%. However, neither team seems to be lacking in mentions as Germany amassed 22,680,311 mentions in those 28 days, while Argentina saw 35,378,525 mentions.
Where all of those mentions were coming from is the interesting part though. When we broke down those mentions of each team by source, we found something very interesting. When both Germany and Argentina were being talked about in blogs and in online news articles, the two seemed quite even. In both blog posts and online news articles the split was 51% to 49% with Argentina getting just a few more mentions than Germany. Then, when we look at forum postings, we find that Germany mentions bested Argentina by almost 150,000 mentions. However, when it then came to Twitter (which is the leading social network for real-time World Cup chatter), Argentina saw almost 13 million more mentions than Germany did.
The difference in Twitter mentions seems quite staggering at first, but then we found something interesting. We took a look at where mentions of each team were originating from across all channels. When we looked at the mentions of Argentina we found that the country making the most noise was (not surprisingly) Argentina. Almost a quarter of all Argentina mentions came from their own country who has been showing their support throughout the World Cup.
But then when we looked at where mentions of Germany were originating from, we found that most of them weren’t coming from Germany. In fact, Germany doesn’t seem to be that active in supporting their team… at least through social media. Germany actually came in 4th in terms of mention of their own country behind the USA, UK and Spain. That lack in social support from their own country can help explain the huge difference in mentions of each country.
Some may argue though that it’s not the number of mentions that a team gets, but rather the intention behind those mentions. To understand the intentions behind those mentions we looked at the sentiment around each team. According to industry leading sentiment analysis engine Argentina has seen a 80% favourable rating during the World Cup. 22% of all mentions about Argentina have been positive, while 20% have been negative.
While Germany hasn’t seen as many social mentions during the World Cup as Argentina, they do have a much better favourable rating, coming in at 81%. While their favourable rating comes in just 1% higher than Argentina, the details show that they actually seem to have a larger percentage of their mentions being positive. Germany has seen 27% of all their mentions being positive and only 19% negative. So, just because they aren’t being talked about as much, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are worse off than their final rivals in any way.
One last interesting chart we want to share with you is our popularity chart, which shows the mentions of each team spread out over the time of the World Cup so far. We just found this one interesting because you can actually see what days each team played on just by looking at how their mentions spike on game days. Take a look:
So who do you think is going to win the World Cup this year? Argentina or Germany? The team with the most social mentions or the team with the most positive sentiment? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
And, for some more World Cup social media fun, be sure to check out our Sysomos #WorldCup Hashtag Tracker which is showing off where tweets containing the official #WorldCup hashtag are originating from in real-time.
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