UEFA.com peaks to match increased online demand
Monday, May 30, 2011
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FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi were the names on everyone's fingertips on Saturday as the UEFA Champions League final took over popular social media platforms Facebook and Twitter.
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Long established as one of the most popular events of the year with television audiences, the UEFA Champions League final is now also proving hugely popular on all online and social media platforms.
UEFA.com lived up to its billing as the official home of the UEFA Champions League online with more extensive coverage than ever across a variety of platforms.
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday alone, 280 articles were published about the final on the website in 12 languages. In addition, four full-length video magazine programmes were produced by the team on site in London during the week of the final, with a total of 74 UEFA.com videos published in eight languages.
UEFA.com featured exclusive interviews with Sir Alex Ferguson, Javier Mascherano, Javier Hernández, Ryan Giggs, Gerard Piqué, Éric Abidal and final referee Viktor Kassai among others in the build-up to the showpiece match.
Fans were also able to interact on the site's daily blogs, the live MatchCentre chat as well as the increasingly popular UEFA.com and UEFA Champions League Facebook pages. For example, the match report post on the UEFA Champions League Facebook page has attracted 1,466 'likes' and 173 comments.
Globally, this season's competition climax, in which FC Barcelona triumphed 3-1 over Manchester United FC, dominated Facebook and Twitter on Saturday night.
The fixture generated over two million mentions on Facebook during the game and man of the match Lionel Messi was also the most popular player on the social network, earning a staggering 439,108 mentions. Wayne Rooney was second with 153,782 references.
Messi was the name on everyone's lips and fingertips as well, being referred to 70,000 times per minute in the aftermath of his second-half goal, which put Barcelona 2-1 ahead. The champions dominated in terms of mentions on the platform almost as much as they did in the passing statistics, with Barcelona referenced 1,831,779 times to 305,830 for United.
On Twitter, meanwhile, the final drove updates on the microblogging service to almost unprecedented levels. There were 6,303 tweets per second – the second highest spike ever – when Rooney equalised for the Premier League side. In reply, 6,277 tweets per second followed David Villa's clinching goal for Barça.
You can keep up to date with UEFA.com and the UEFA Champions League on Facebook and follow UEFA.com on Twitter.
