Russia 2018: The biggest ever tournament on Social Media

By Amelia Fisher-Starzynski, July 17, 2018: From Paris to Bordeaux, Marseille to Lille, all of France is still celebrating its second World Cup title (Russia 2018 Social Media).

 

 

 

 

 

While Les Bleus reigned victorious on the pitch in Russia, they couldn’t finish as champions in the social media sphere.

That title belonged to Brazil.

The numbers are in and they tell a story of the biggest world cup on social media ever.

Primetag’s technology has analysed the activity of the accounts of all the players at the World Cup and is ready to share the key figures of a tournament, which was celebrated by everyone on Instagram, by far the most popular platform for the football community.

• Nearly one billion interactions generated on Instagram alone/Russia 2018 Social Media

• Brazil, Portugal and France, respectively, topped the social media rankings

• Cristiano Ronaldo, undisputed king of social media at the world cup

Instagram highlights of the tournament/Russia 2018 Social Media/Russia 2018 Social Media:

• 990 million (990,642,846) – number of interactions generated by the content.

• 287 million (287,703,784) – number of video views.

• 6,366 – number of images and videos that players have uploaded to Instagram.

• 88% – percentage of World Cup players that are active on Instagram.

The representatives of the Brazilian team accumulated almost 194 million interactions from their followers, a number equivalent to almost their entire population.

Portugal, led by the unbeatable – even on the social networks – Cristiano Ronaldo, stood in second place with 120.6 million interactions.

The third place was reserved for the official winner, France, with the largest number of posts (390) and 117.9 million interactions.

Regarding players, Cristiano Ronaldo was the undisputed king as he led the way with a grand total of over 110 million interactions, followed closely by Neymar and Paul Pogba.

Ranking of countries that generated the most interactions between June 14 and July 15:
(access complete list here).

	National team	Nº of contents	Nº of interactions
1	Brazil	321	193,831,130
2	Portugal	170	120,631,881
3	France	390	117,913,760
4	Spain	207	75,541,627
5	Argentina	250	68,865,372
6	Croatia	414	53,224,339
7	Colombia	181	51,689,004
8	England	306	48,875,285
9	Germany	199	47,128,557
10	Belgium	393	36,121,438

Primetag has also analysed the level of interactivity of the followers with each player.

	Player	Nº of contents	Nº of interactions
1	Cristiano Ronaldo	17	110,018,453
2	Neymar	27	97,929,405
3	Paul Labile Pogba	40	35,922,377
4	Sergio Ramos	34	31,108,500
5	Kylian Mbappé	18	29,690,081
6	James Rodríguez	11	28,098,114
7	Marcelo	28	26,549,388
8	Paulo Dybala	13	25,662,207
9	Philippe Coutinho	13	25,408,022
10	Ivan Rakitic	48	20,383,293

• Cristiano Ronaldo leads with 110 million interactions, a number which represents 92% of the entire Portuguese sum.

• Neymar makes it to second place after having uploaded 27 posts and garnering almost 98 million likes and comments.

• The bronze was earned by Paul Pogba, with 40 posts and 35.9 million interactions.

• The official winner of the World Cup owes 56% of its interactions on Instagram to two players; France´s Pogba and Mbappé.

• A similar phenomenon is repeated with Sergio Ramos, who together with the interactions generated by Isco Alarcón and Marco Asensio, accounts for 70.6% of the noise generated in networks by La Roja.

• James Rodríguez (28 million interactions) represents more than half (56%) of the interactions of the Colombian national team.

Thanks to the Primetag technology, it has also been possible to determine the most influential eleven at the world cup, a winning ´fantasy football´ team of sorts from social networks, based on the number of likes and comments generated by the players.

German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer would be in charge of defending the goal, with the help of the defence comprising of Sergio Ramos, Marcelo, Yerry Mina and the Iranian Ramin Rezaeian.

The midfielders World Cup are Paul Pogba, James Rodriguez and Philippe Coutinho in charge to give passes to the forward stars: Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Mbappe.

Russia 2018 stands out as the World Cup of the ‘underdogs’: South Korea defeated Germany, Russia overtook Spain and Croatia managed to reach the final after leaving Argentina behind.

Their midfielder, Rurik Gislason (1,376,476 followers; @rurikgislason), takes the ‘rising star’ award on Instagram.

Below are the three outstanding posts of each phase of the competition. It includes the content with the most ‘likes’, comments and engagement of each phase of the tournament:

Group stage (06/14 – 06/28)/Russia 2018 Social Media

Publications withthe most.	Player	Country	URL	Result
Likes	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal	https://goo.gl/cFwLyS	9,956,050
Comments	Lionel Messi	Argentina	https://goo.gl/5rFAkP	314k
Engagement	Jimmy Durmaz	Sweden	https://goo.gl/nMFHCC	90.59%

Round of 16 (06/30 – 03/07)/Russia 2018 Social Media

Likes	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal	https://goo.gl/tzT5zA	6,989,633
Comments	Miguel Layun	Mexico	https://goo.gl/ETnSLC	451k
Engagement	Takashi Inui	Japan	https://goo.gl/NnZeXW	76.52%

Quarterfinals (06/07 – 07/07)/Russia 2018 Social Media

Likes	Neymar	Brazil	https://goo.gl/SR2C3d	4,682,653
Comments	Fernandinho	Brazil	https://goo.gl/pFMbCh	188k
Engagement	Benjamin Pavard	France	https://goo.gl/TrJnsX	36.12%

Semifinals (10/07 – 11/07)

Likes	Paulo Dybala	Argentina	https://goo.gl/Fxnyk7	3,330,916
Comments	Kylian Mbappé	France	https://goo.gl/a4gnNx	45.7k
Engagement	Benjamin Pavard	France	https://goo.gl/6PXdE1	46.14%

Final (15/07)

Likes	Kylian Mbappé	France	https://goo.gl/P94JpK	4,733,843
Comments	Kylian Mbappé	France	https://goo.gl/hmFjHx	79.9k
Engagement	Benjamin Pavard	France	https://goo.gl/3CVFMG	61.7%