UEFA Champions League Social ‘Buzz’ is Worldwide: Adobe Digital Index

Adobe Digital Index (ADI) has seen a worldwide “social buzz” ahead of the UEFA Champions League Final taking place this weekend in Portugal.

Whilst the derby is between two Spanish football teams, the match is picking-up much wider interest with 120 countries, out of 196 countries worldwide, contributing to the social buzz around the match.

Surprisingly, Spanish social media users don’t dominate the conversation; instead, Indonesia tops the list of countries talking about the Champions League in the social space, accounting for 22% of mentions. Spain is second with 12%, the U.K. third with 9%, and then the U.S. and Venezuela with 5%.

Mark Zablan, president of Adobe EMEA, noted the tremendous opportunity presented by football fans’ activity on social and mobile.

“The Champion’s League final and the upcoming World Cup offer marketers around the globe the chance to capitalize on what is shaping up to be a record level of mobile video and social media activity, as fans and foes pick up smartphones to catch up and comment on the teams online,” he said. “Analysing social media ‘buzz’ data is a perfect way for marketers to identify new opportunities.

Following ‘mentions’ quantifies the huge worldwide appeal of what some marketers might just consider a regional event. This is a great justification for expanding the use of social and mobile marketing in a business strategy

ADI used Adobe Social (Adobe is CMO.com’s parent company) to monitor 4.5 million mentions of the final match on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, VK, Reddit, Disqus, and blogs during May.

Other key findings include:

• Among the players on show in the final, Real striker Cristiano Ronaldo figures most prominently in social media, averaging 36,425 mentions a day, compared with Atlético’s Diego Costa’s 20,908 average mentions
• Gareth Bale, the world’s most expensive footballer, sits in fourth place in average mentions, with only a quarter as many mentions as Ronaldo
• 43% of buzz about the UEFA Champions League final reflects ‘joy’ or ‘admiration’ for the game, while 25% is related to ‘sadness,’ showing the mirrored images of the emotional journey that fans go through

Please see more information here: http://eu.cmo.com/articles/2014/5/23/uefa_champions_leagu.html