South Africa’s disappointment from the Rugby World Cup’s semi-final results was made evident this weekend by the lack of Twitter conversation filling newsfeeds. While #rwc2015 still dominates, Twitter users celebrated the @wallabies and @allblacks wins above all else as both undefeated sides move into the finals.
Over the semi-final weekend, the top Twitter mentions went to @wallabies and @allblacks, which garnered even more mentions than @rugbyworldcup with over 220 and 140 mentions respectively. The rugby tweet that received the most re-tweets was made by @rugbyworldcup just before the South Africa and New Zealand semi-final: “The reigning Rugby World Cup champions are ready. The Haka lays down the challenge. It’s time. #RSAvNZL.”
#RWC2015, was still the most used hashtag this weekend with over 30 000 people incorporating this into their tweets. Interestingly, 72% of people (with identifiable age on Twitter) who engaged on Twitter regarding the Rugby World Cup are over the age of 35, with 75% being male.
“It’s very evident when looking at the Twitter stats this weekend that Australia and New Zealand were all the rage,” says Marius Greeff, commercial director at Spark Media.
“Since we started monitoring the Rugby World Cup, a total of nearly 1-million World Cup posts have been made. South Africa still makes the top four countries when it comes to the most tweets. Obviously the UK dominates with 45% of the total count.
“We are interested to see what will happen on Twitter during next week’s final,” Greeff adds.
