With the 2014 FIFA World Cup concluded and Germany victorious, data continues to reveal just how entwined mobile engagement was with the experience of the games.
SAP, which says it processes 1.8 billion messages daily from more than 1,000 operators, analyzed how text messaging traffic fluctuated around the world in response to how teams fared in the games. The biggest spike in traffic, according to the company, came right after the U.S. match against Belgium – at which point SMS traffic spiked almost 5,000% in Belgium, and traffic from the country remained at about 1,000% above normal for 14 minutes.
The other top two SMS generating matches were the Costa Rica vs. Netherlands game, which boosted SMS traffic from the Netherlands more than 3,600% above normal; and Germany’s win over Argentina, when German SMS messages rose 1,000% over typical use. The Netherlands had the most prolific texters overall during the playoff rounds, SAP said, but messages tapered off during the team’s third-place win over Brazil. Winning teams almost always out-messaged losing teams. Other post-World Cup analysis illustrated just how prevalent the use of mobile connections and social media were during the games.
Facebook said that 88 million users generated 280 million likes, posts and comments related to the final match of the FIFA World Cup. Twitter said its users were tweeting at the rate of 618,725 tweets per minute.
Allot Communications monitored mobile application traffic related to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and said that real-time data showed that use of apps such as ESPN, BBC sports and Eurosports increased 300% over average levels during game times. Allot said that typical network traffic peaks shifted from their usual hours to the hours that games were held, sometimes resulting in two peak periods per day.
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