Twitter reveals top Champions League moments so far, with Atlético vs Barcelona generating most buzz
Twitter has provided some insight into the buzz around the Uefa Champions League on the platform ahead of this weekend’s final.
Since the group stages of the tournament began in September, over 65 million tweets have been sent about the Champions League.
Most of the chat generated online so far has centred around three key events, the first being when the final whistle blew to see Atlético Madrid beat Barcelona in April to reach the semi final. 56,000 tweets were being sent out each minute in the aftermatch.
During the same game, a penalty scored by Antoine Griezmann, giving Atlético a huge away goal which levelled the score to 2-1 on aggregate, courted the same number of tweets per-minute.
The third most popular moment also involved Atlético, and was gifted to Twitter when the Madrid side won a dramatic second leg against Bayern to steal their place in the final back in March; a win that also clocked up 56,000 posts every 60 seconds.
The most re-tweeted tweet related to the League came from Leicester City player Robert Huth, who said he was looking forward to his team’s debut Uefa campaign next year in light of the team’s Premiere League victory.
Yes! Champions League guaranteed! Better start practicing my Rabonas
— robert huth (@robert_huth) April 10, 2016
Interestingly, Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo – who is the world’s most popular athlete on social media with over 200 million followers – has so far courted more mentions in tweets that the entire Atlético squad combined during this year’s competition.
Although, in terms of overall @ mentions so far, the crown goes to Atlético manager Diego Simeone, followed by Bayern Munich boss Pep Guardiola with Ronaldo coming third.
While Twitter has been making inroads into real-time sports programming with NFL games, BT Sport has confirmed that it will provide a live stream of the Champions League and Europa League Finals for free on YouTube this year.