Following the round of 16 fixtures at Euro 2016, Italy’s social media platforms held on to first place for engagement and worldwide growth. The team’s 2-0 win over La Furia Roja reverberated around the digital channels and contributed to a record high in engagement. According to German analytics firm ResultSports, the Vivo Azzurro community were top after the group stage and stayed there following the first round of knockout fixtures with 619,649 new users across all platforms. In behind were the hosts France, World Cup holders Germany and England. On individual platforms, there was an increase of 413,220 on Facebook, 122,253 on Instagram, 55,129 on Twitter (@Vivo_Azzurro and @azzurri) and a growth of 28,535 subscribers on YouTube. (source: Result Sports).
Italian social media agency Blogmeter revealed that there was a record figure of 7.4 million interactions related to Italy vs. Spain. There were a total of 454,000 messages with 72 per cent of them coming from Twitter. “The peak number of 113,000 messages arrived at the time of the second goal when the Italy Facebook page published the most interacted with post which announced the win and qualification to the quarter-finals,” said Blogmeter. (Source: Blogmeter). In detail, the aforementioned post reached more than 16.3 million people, generating 206,000 likes, 4,800 comments and 126,000 shares! Such impressive figures made this post the most successful of the entire competition! (Source: Facebook Insights). In terms of success, it was a similar story on Twitter where @Vivo_Azzurro was the most interacted with Italian account with 36,296 engagements while the account in second place had 4,752 interactions.
Another positive was the initiative between Italy, Spain and Twitter under the name #MediterraneanDerby. Messages of fair play between Chiellini and Morata and interviews asking what they liked most about the other country were picked up by major television, digital and print sources in both countries! A long list of messages accumulated under #MediterraneanDerby where Italian fans expressed their appreciation for Spain and vice versa.
Today, the @Vivo_Azzurro Twitter profile made its first live broadcast on Periscope of training and the press conference. The two streams immediately tallied over 100,000 views. Italy’s Periscope account is as follows: https://www.periscope.tv/Vivo_Azzurro. The ‘Forza Azzurri’ badge which users can apply to their profile pictures is continuing to grow and it has been applied more than 1.5 million times while also notching up 414 million views. (Source: Facebook Insights).