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IPL goes hot on Twitter

KKR has stood out as the most followed team while RCB is the most talked about team in the ninth season of the cricket extravaganza. Brands are playing a smart game too on Twitter

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IPL goes hot on Twitter

KKR has stood out as the most followed team while RCB is the most talked about team in the ninth season of the cricket extravaganza. Brands are playing a smart game too on Twitter

Raushni Bhagia | Mumbai | April 29, 2016

IPL-LogoThree weeks into the biggest sporting event in the country, the Indian Premier League is quickly moving towards becoming the most talked about cricketing event on Twitter. Till now, the ICC Twenty20 World Cup was holding the title of most tweeted cricket event with a whopping 5.75 billion Live Impressions.

In its ninth season now, IPL has already seen an increase of over 65 per cent followers over IPL7. The popularity of the event across the world is crossing all milestones with the league gaining more than 80 million tweets before even completing two weeks.

Twitter has been a popular platform for the masses to follow sports, especially the IPL league, as the social networking platform keeps on adding features to enable ease of access. During IPL7, Twitter added the feature where fans could tweet to get the IPL schedule on their cellphones.  The following year, they did one better by allowing users to follow teams, or the league, by merely sending a missed call. They haven't been idle this season either as they have enabled uploading of 30-second videos during every match.

Aneesh Madani, Head of Sports Partnership, Twitter India, said, “These short snackable videos have been an instant hit. And ultimately, it is these small stories which make the event big. With the youth making up more than 600 million of the Indian population, it is no doubt that Twitter has been heavily used to follow IPL. The popularity of the league compounded with the ease of access and the outreach of Twitter has made the cricket event a social TV experience.”

As of April 19, the IPL handle on Twitter has had 4.15 million followers. That's like 4.15 million people watching the same match, tweeting the same score; basically just 4.15 million people watching the match together.

Popular teams & players

The teams have had their fair share of followers, with Kolkata Knight Riders leading the race with 1.54 million followers. The newest entrants to the league, Rising Pune Supergiants and Gujarat Lions, subsequently take the second last and the last slots in the list of most followed teams. However, with both of them having been around for a little more than three months, their tallies of 43k and 38k followers respectively is amazing high. It is obvious since the existing teams have had a grace of eight years to build following and fan base.

Royal Challengers Bangalore have trumped everyone in being the most talked about team on Twitter. And why not, with captain Virat Kohli being the second most talked about cricketer around the world, coming only after Sachin Tendulkar. The most mentioned player in the IPL format, however, is still the captain of the Indian cricket team and Rising Pune Supergiants, Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

India has been the only country to have launched three to four big leagues in the span of a couple of years, and so the youth have taken to social media to follow the different leagues in different sports. The Star Sports Pro Kabaddi League saw an increase of 254 per cent increase in tweets, with #LePanga trending like anything. Indian Super League, the biggest football movement in India, saw a total of 363.3 million views of tweets regarding its second season.

Brands join the game

Top brands haven't been far behind in cashing in on the IPL tidal wave as they see Twitter as an indispensable platform to reach out to and engage with fans. While @GoogleIndia scratched the surface with #CricketWithGoogle and #FindYourJersey campaigns, it is @Nissan_India that has consistently been included amongst the top brands for engagement in the Twitter Cricket Index. They had started the build up to their campaign back in December, with hashtags such as #MomentsThatCount encouraging users to vote and participate in contests and polls.

“We keep discussing with the brands and working with them to create better and more effective brand communication on our platform. Like we did for Vodafone for their SuperNet campaigns. It is also a major source of income for us,” said Madani.

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