Australia beat NZ for Rugby World Cup social sharing according to RadiumOne figures
Australia may have lost the Rugby World Cup final to New Zealand but their fans won the battle on social media sharing almost twice as much rugby related content in the build up to Sunday morning’s showdown as the Kiwis, according to RadiumOne research.
That figure came despite New Zealand’s team having a following of 4.51m across its social channels, which grew 7 per cent during the tournament. NZ’s population is around 4.6m.
Twitter has also released figures showing there were 560,ooo tweets about the World Cup sent in total on match day, with activity peaking at 4:29am AEDT with 2.9oo tweets per minute as the Wallabies edged back into contention briefly.
The social network has also produced a heatmap showing where tweets were coming from globally at what time during the final.
According to the RadiumOne data pre-match patriotism on social peaked at 6pm on Saturday whilst Australian sharing of rugby content online has more than doubled in the past two months.
It also claims an average of 75 per cent of sporting content is shared online via dark social channels (eg email or instant messenger services) with 20 per cent on Facebook and 5 per cent on other networks.
An outstanding effort by the Wallabies to make it to the Rugby World Cup final, showcasing wonderful skills and an undying courage.
Yes, they certainly won millions more fans around Australia and the world.
It’s now up to the Australian Rugby Union to capitalise on the incredible media coverage and fan support to leverage this into next year’s Super Rugby competition, the three test clash with England here next year and then The Rugby Championship when they once again face the World Champion New Zealanders, Springboks and Argentina.
And next year they have two other Rugby products to add into the mix – Rugby Sevens at the Olympics and the outstanding and entertaining football played in the just completed but under-promoted NRC (National Rugby Championship).
In previous post-Rugby World Cups the ARU, wrongly, had assumed the momentum would continue without some smart marketing and PR.
They can’t afford to drop the ball this time.
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