May 28 – UEFA have released a set Champions League numbers that show another year of impressive growth and making the final, says UEFA, “the world’s most-watched annual television sporting event on television and social media platforms”.
An estimated global average audience of 150 million and a projected global unique reach of over 360 million viewers in more than 200 countries watched FC Bayern München’s 2-1 Wembley victory over Borussia Dortmund.
In Germany viewing peaked at 23.78 million (average 22.5 million) viewers in Germany, a record for a UEFA Champions League fixture in the country.
In 2013 the Champions League has provided the three most-watched events in the country: Bayern’s semi-final second leg away to FC Barcelona and Dortmund’s semi-final first leg against Real Madrid CF are second and third behind the Wembley final.
The 15 matchdays in the UEFA Champions League calendar generated global audiences of between 105 and 228 million viewers during live match broadcasts.
Looking at web media, the Champions League continues to be the main driver of traffic to UEFA.com, a 13% year-on-year growth in visits and a 25% growth in visitors to the competition’s homepage. 20% of visits are from mobile phones or tablets.
UEFA estimates the number of fans following UEFA’s official social media channels to have reached the 22 million mark.
Key engagement stats:
– 4.8 million tweets in 3.5 hours around the final
– 117,601 tweets per minute at the final whistle
– most mentioned player was Arjen Robben in 1 million+ tweets
– Around 190,000 uses (150,824 on final day) of UEFA’s chosen hashtag, #UCLfinal
– The first European integration of a live stream and Google+ hangout for the Ultimate Champions match.
– 4 million people have either +1’d or followed the UEFA.com Google+ page – an increase of 3.7 million over the 2012 final.
– 175,000+ new Facebook likes
– A UEFA record 200,000 likes for a single post on Saturday
– 8.9 million ‘likes’ of the official UEFA Champions League page
– 2 million Youtube channel views of videos posted in seven languages
– 58,000 video views on finals day
– An estimated 8.53 million viewers watched the Women’s Champions League Final between Vfb Wolfsburg and Olympique Lyonnais the previous Thursday, live from Stamford Bridge, London
– 85,000 interactions using RFID (touch-in) technology at the UEFA Champions Festival from 13,000 registered cards
The RFID concept was created to increase viral momentum across the social networks. The 34,000 or so visitors who attended the UEFA Champions Festival in Stratford, east London, were invited to ‘Join the Game’ by registering their RFID card and linking it to their Facebook or Twitter account. Once registered, users could follow their progress on an interactive leader board after participating in various challenges, with prizes available to the best performers. Another 6,000 people visited a second site at Trafalgar Square, which was illuminated at night by a 3D projection of great UEFA Champions League moments and players.
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