Jonny Wilkinson dominates the Heineken Cup final Twitter explosion
The 18th edition of the Heineken Cup final was arguably the most entertaining. Thousands of French fans filled Aviva Stadium with colour and noise while both teams produced a nail biting eighty minutes of Heineken Cup rugby.
All week Heineken’s Social Tracker measured the surge in social media excitement and captured the monumental Twitter frenzy over the course of the match itself. The data collected, paints a detailed picture of how fans and players reacted to the highs and lows of the encounter and illustrates how both teams enjoyed almost equal support across the social network.
Amongst the 120,000 tweets measured over a six-day period, 27,253 were attributed to RC Toulon, the new Heineken Cup champions, and 26,349 to Clermont Auvergne. Not surprisingly 91% of Toulon’s tweets were positive while the heart-breaking manner of Clermont Auvergne’s defeat meant that only 17% of their tweets were negative.
Three of the top five most tweeted players hail from the winning team with Toulon’s Jonny Wilkinson topping the list with 6,289 tweets. All five of the most tweeted players are non-French speaking and while the volume of tweets for Wilkinson are positive, the same cannot be said for his team-mate Delon Armitage (@delonarmitage). The majority of the 3,312 tweets using @delonarmitage were negative after the English full back’s unconventional celebration on the way to scoring what proved to be RC Toulon’s match winning try.
Australian Matt Giteau (@giteau_rugby) again proved a popular figure as his photo, holding the Heineken Cup in the team dressing room, was almost immediately re-tweeted 518 times.
Social Tracker is just one of Heineken's many Get in the Game activities which has seen fans engage with Heineken Cup rugby online, on their mobiles and in pubs and venues around the country. There have been over 85,000 game plays of Get in the Game to date with fans around the country engaging via their mobiles, computers and in pubs and homes with the online game. Stay in touch via #GETINTHEGAME or www.facebook.com/heineken
