Despite not qualifying for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Chinese football fans were seemingly engrossed with the ongoings of the event, an interest that carried over to activity on Chinese social media's most subscribed network: Sina Weibo. Mailman took a look at how the event was followed, talked about, and supported online in China in this overview of the World Cup online in China.

1. REPORT:
The 2014 FIFA World Cup Online in China
China’s World Cup Wrap Up Powered by

2. The World Cup is the single most
popular sporting event in the world,
both online and offline

3. Despite not qualifying, China was heavily
invested online in the ongoings of the
2014 World Cup

4. Vocabulary
Mentions
# of times the word or
hashtag was posted
about
Engagement
# of forwards,
comments and likes
per post.
Exposure
# of times a user
viewed the hashtag
activity page

5. Opening Game
In the 24 hours encompassing the opening match, the two
participating teams (#Brazil vs Croatia#) were mentioned over
40,000 times on Sina Weibo.
Player accounts were slow to kick off, with only two posts about the
opening match from notable players, the more viral of which only
received 153 engagement.
12,450,000
‘World Cup’ mentions in
24 hours surrounding
the opening match
During the course of the match, Twitter saw over 12.2 million Tweets from 150
countries, reflecting how impressive Weibo’s primarily single-country activity was
Mailman
INSIGHT

6. The Tournament
29.75 bn
users read World Cup
related posts
Mailman
INSIGHT
Of the users who were on Weibo while watching the World Cup,
55.2% were female, and 54.7% were born in the 1990s
Between June 12 and July 14, 105 million users made a total of
1.96 billion interactions, 914 million of which were original content
According to a report released by Sina Weibo, the most popular players on the platform
during the World Cup were 1 - Lionel Messi, 2 - Cristiano Ronaldo, 3 - Neymar JR

7. Highlight: Germany vs Brazil
The match went so viral on Weibo that a unique hashtag was
developed to describe the result, #Brazil Weeps#, the posts about
which were read by over 32M users, sparking 87,000 comments
The Germany vs Brazil hashtag page received over 260,000,000
exposure
1,800,000
Mentions of #GERvBRA over
the 24 hours surrounding
their game
Mailman
INSIGHT
The first game also sparked a great deal of interest in Neymar, who
proceeded to become a fan favorite in China

8. Mailman
INSIGHT
World Cup Final
#Germany vs Argentina # was mentioned 3,319,000 times during the
24 hours encompassing the World Cup final
During the day, Messi was mentioned over 2 million times, while
Götze was only mentioned 570,000 times despite scoring the extra-
time goal that would see Germany win the World Cup
1.4 billion users read the discussion board ‘# Germany # Cheering’ featured on
Weibo’s World Cup blog portal
11,965,000
‘World Cup’ mentions over
the 24 hours surrounding
their game

9. England has the most followers due to the popularity and long term
presence of the English Premier league and its players on Weibo
Germany was the earliest to join the platform, as early as May 2012,
giving them a headstart on the other two teams, however lack of club
and league presence made it hard for them to succeed at first
3
National teams have an
official Weibo account
The Belgian Red Devils joined slightly too late in April, just before the World Cup began,
making their presence relatively unknown by users until more than a week into the event
Mailman
INSIGHT
National Team Overview

10. Because England already had most of their following established,
there was little room for growth, only gaining 85,000 new followers
Germany attracted the most new fans, with over 500,000 new
followers amassed during the competition
The Belgian national team’s official Weibo account only saw an increase of 50,000
followers, with the bulk of their growth occurring directly before their last group stage
match
Mailman
INSIGHT
National Team Growth
3,650,000
collective fans across
the 3 accounts

11. Player Overview 13,000
forwards on Özil’s
victory post with the
World Cup trophy
The winning player posts received much greater engagement than the DFB team’
s victory post, indicating netizens preference toward players not clubs
Mailman
INSIGHT
Özil and Podolski experienced an increase in Weibo exposure, each
growing their followings by approximately 100,000, and their World
Cup victory posts reaching around 25,000 engagement each
A surprisingly engaged player during the event was Wesley
Sneijder, who posted ‘Pay Back’ after the Dutch victory over Spain,
which achieved over 8,000 engagement
20,000
forwards on Podolski’s
victory post, a selfie on
the field with a fellow
Germany player

12. Weibo’s flag game allowed users to select their favorite nations
flag to accompany their handle, the country with the most users by
the end of the tournament was Germany with 1,963,000
Despite not qualifying for the tournament, Sina allowed users to
select the Chinese flag as well, which prompted 1,040,000 users
to select China’s flag, the second most used of the program
‘Flag Game’ Overview
3
nations reached more than
1 million flag users, China,
Germany, and Argentina
Spain’s flag was a favorite worn Chinese netizens leading up to the event, however
30,000 users changed their flag after the team was knocked out in the group stages
Mailman
INSIGHT

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