Sports Wrap Up for 2011

Online sports conversation is a stalwart here in South Africa (and probably the world for that matter) and 2011 has lived up to the hype by delivering a jam-packed sporting year.  In this post I have decided to share some benchmark values in terms of online conversation, particularly focusing on the big 3 team based sports in South Africa - Cricket, Rugby and Soccer.

Cricket

BrandsEye decided to have a look the recent ODI series between South Africa and Australia, where the visiting team won the series 2-1, and compare that to the Indian Premier League (IPL) final, which was during May this year.

On average, regardless of who won, each SA vs. Australia game received approximately 2 500 online mentions. This is about 700 more mentions than the IPL final received on May 28, with roughly 1 800 mentions. Twitter dominates online conversation for cricket, occupying around 85% of the conversation. 

The biggest learning: The data shows that when the best players are involved in a tournament, online conversation flourishes. This strong online support for international competitions means that there is great value in sponsoring these competitions as the company has the potential of developing an online presence for being affiliated with a particular team or tournament.

Rugby

With so many events to speak of (as well as the fact that this is my personal favorite sport) here are some headline statistics from some of the tournaments this year:

• Currie Cup Final: 3 308 mentions (98% on Twitter)
• Super Rugby Final: 7 022 mentions (97% on Twitter)
• Tri-Nations Final: 7 7 62 mentions (79% on Twitter)
• Rugby World Cup Final: 44 426 mentions (95% on Twitter)

The learning here was that while "local is lekker", online volumes increase significantly the further we move away from the home country. This again indicates the value that competitive tournaments have when there is an international online audience. I also suspect that if the quality of the international competitions are high it will have the reverse effect of making cross-country support for local tournaments more popular (this was the case for this year's ABSA Currie Cup as there was quite a strong contingent of international support on the day of the final).

Soccer 

• Soweto Derby: 4 556 mentions
• Bafana Bafana: 8 700 mentions (this was for the most recent AFCON qualifying game against Sierra Leone)

Twitter contributes to 88% of the South African online soccer conversation.

Similar to that of other sports, the biggest learning is that volumes of international matches perform better than the biggest local derby in South Africa.

Overall it is fascinating to see what a stronghold Twitter has on online sports conversation regardless of who the sport's target audience are. The disparity between online sports audience is far less than that of viewership. 

For anyone interested in sports' branding this is value proposition: How do we generate online hype for local games and let that filter through to the international sports arena (or should we think of ways to invert that process i.e. leverage international tournaments to increase local conversations)? Is it worthwhile to do what Club de Futbol Jaguares de Chiapas did in an attempt to raise their online profile by putting the football players' Twitter names on the back on their shirts?

GH