24 Mar El Clásico buzz by the numbers

Last week we highlighted how El Clásico would light up Social Media, but also how it’s truly a global event. Thanks to Facebook’s great visualization of the event, we can quantify and categorize how users reacted to this great game. As you can see above, the game engaged 22 million people, who created 58 million interactions, but Facebook went as far as to quantify the people per minute interacting on their platform during Barcelona’s 2-1 win over fierce rivals Real Madrid.

The most talked about moments were, in order of volume of interactions: post-game chatter right after the final whistle, Ronaldo’s first goal for Real Madrid, Barcelona’s opening goal, the end of the first half, and Luis Suárez game winner. Even more interesting, the top countries interaction on Facebook during the game were: United States, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia. Spain, the country where this great rivalry emerged, is fifth in this list, followed by Turkey, Colombia, Argentina, Guatemala and Morocco. As you can see, truly a global game!

Facebook saw plenty of buzz, but TV viewership in the US also keeps climbing every time Barcelona and Real Madrid play each other. The game was broadcasted by beIN SPORTS, delivering an average of 2.12 million total viewers across both English and Spanish language networks. 1.353 million of those viewers were in the Spanish language channel, while a total of 767,000 total viewers watched the game on beIN SPORTS English. These figures represented an overall increase of 16% in viewership from the last Clásico back in October of 2014, and a +64% increase in viewership for beIN SPORTS en Español, another great sign of the increasing soccer audience in the United States.