How Twitter and Facebook shaped the way we watched World Cup 2014

If you are under the age of 40, think about how you watched the current FIFA World Cup.

While the game was on, how many times did you reach out to grab your phone, tablet or laptop? Chances are you did this multiple times and most certainly during the breaks in play. Whether it was to celebrate a “Gooooaaaaallllll”, rant about a bad decision, advise the coach or offer your condolences to your favorite team after a defeat, chances are Twitter and Facebook was your medium of communication.

According to official data released by Facebook on 30 June, more than one billion people liked, shared or commented on World Cup 2014 related content during the group stages alone. It is therefore safe to assume that this number would have easily doubled by 13 July, the day of the final. Similarly Twitter has been buzzing with World Cup news and views since the beginning of the tournament.

The microblogging site in fact preempted this and created official accounts and hashtags for all the matches. It also allowed users to change their cover images to that of their favourite teams, tweet out little graphics of the flags of participating countries and create filters that allowed them to get updates on various teams and players. And people responded.

The Brazil vs Germany semi-final match logged a mind-boggling 35.6 million tweets, breaking the previous record of 16.4 million tweets that were sent out during the Brazil-Chile round of 16 match.

While the second screen floodgates may have opened with this current World Cup, the reality is that social media analysts, sports marketers and broadcasters have been talking about the power of the second screen since as early as 2005.

What makes the second screen so powerful? It empowers the three biggest stakeholders in sports – the athletes, sponsors and fans.

Social media allows the players on the field to come across as accessible and human. One gets a peep into their personal lives and thoughts. They can be just a tweet, Facebook like or comment away, while at the same time maintaining a distance that allows them to still be revered. Think of the the cool kids in school or college. You watched them from afar most of the time but once in a while, if you were lucky, they would acknowledge your greeting.

It is the fact that we all have access to these athletes that makes all the difference. Now we can hear firsthand Colombian defender Juan Zuniga’s apology to Neymar or Mesut Özil’s exuberation at reaching the finals.

And who loves the stars and the fans getting together? The brands.

Even not so avid fans know that official sponsorships are sold for astronomical sums. And the millions that firms spend to acquire rights is just half the battle. What really matters is how much have they set aside as activation budgets. This is where social media comes in. It is a low-cost, high-engagement medium that helps brands interact with potential customers from all over the world. It also increases sponsorship inventory and provides brands which don’t have deep pockets to get a piece of an international sporting event.

During the current World Cup, practically every brand created a social media campaign around it, irrespective of whether they were official sponsors or not. Social media and the second screen phenomenon have made brands more engaged and freed them of the shackles of traditional media. Like people, they can now react in real time. An example that immediately comes to my mind is Snickers and the tweet it sent out after the Suarez biting incident - “Hey @luis16suarez. Next time you’re hungry just grab a Snickers.” This got retweeted over 48,000 times! With 140 characters Snicker got more mileage out of the event than a lot of the official partners did. This is exactly why businesses love the second screen phenomenon.

Fans on the other hand appear to love the second screen because it makes sports viewing a social event, unlike the passive experience it is when you are just sitting in front of the television. Sports as an activity, unlike reading or watching a movie, is always enjoyed best with company. The more the merrier. This is why watching a game on TV is more fun with friends and going to the stadium is even more fun. Thanks to social media though, you could be sitting in your living room alone but thanks to the hashtag or the share button you are instantly connected to millions of other fans, globally. It is a big party and we all celebrate, rant and cry together.

Besides, the modern sports fan is forever hungry for triva and the second screen helps satiate this hunger to a large extent. All stats and records are available at your fingertips. Though the biggest benefit of the second screen is it helps the sports fanatic to be in two places at once. I know enough people who were watching the FIFA World Cup and Wimbledon simultaneously all thanks to the power of the second screen.

Recently, Sean Casey, senior vice president at Nielsen stated “sports events account for 2-to-3 percent of television programming every month. Yet that small amount produces roughly 50 percent of Twitter’s overall activity around TV.”

Sports is leading the charge for second screen adoption. The 2014 World Cup was simply the biggest beneficiary so far.