Russia 2018: The biggest-ever tournament on Social Media

12 Jul, 2021

Tuesday, 17 July 2018:

From Paris to Bordeaux, Marseille to Lille, all of France is still celebrating its second World Cup title. 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.

Instagram highlights of the tournament:

· 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.

So which team won the World Cup on Instagram? That title goes to Brazil, who beat Portugal and France to finish first even though they were knocked out in the quarter finals. 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:

National team

Nº of contents

Nº of interactions

Brazil

321

193,831,130

Portugal

170

120,631,881

France

390

117,913,760

Spain

207

75,541,627

Argentina

250

68,865,372

Croatia

414

53,224,339

Colombia

181

51,689,004

England

306

48,875,285

Germany

199

47,128,557

Belgium

393

36,121,438

Primetag has also analysed the level of interactivity of the followers with each player. Below is the definitive ranking of player’s social media analytics on Instagram during the 2018 World Cup.

Player

Nº of contents

Nº of interactions

Cristiano Ronaldo

110,018,453

Neymar

97,929,405

Paul Labile Pogba

35,922,377

Sergio Ramos

31,108,500

Kylian Mbappé

29,690,081

James Rodríguez

28,098,114

Marcelo

26,549,388

Paulo Dybala

25,662,207

Philippe Coutinho

25,408,022

Ivan Rakitic

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. This phenomenon has also been reflected in social networks, where Iceland has been the big surprise. Their midfielder, Rurik Gislason (1,376,476 followers; @rurikgislason), takes the ‘rising star’ award on Instagram. Since defending the Icelandic flag against Argentina on June 16, his followers have increased by 4,258% to date.

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)

Publications withthe most.

Player

Country

URL

Result

Likes

Cristiano Ronaldo

Portugal

https://goo.gl/cFwLyS

9,956,050

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