The World Cup final between Germany and Argentina on Sunday marked a high point in social media conversations, setting records on both Twitter and Facebook.
The final match-up generated 280 million Facebook (FB) interactions, which includes posts, comments and likes across 88 million users. That is the highest level of conversation for any event in the history of the service. Over the course of the World Cup extravaganza, from June 12 through July 11, Facebook users posted a total of 3 billion interactions on the social network.
Twitter (TWTR) users also set a record for most tweets per minute, reaching 618,725 messages at the moment of Germany’s victory. More than 32 million tweets were posted during the match, though the record for most overall tweets during a game went to the Brazil versus Germany semi-final last week. A total of 35.6 million tweets posted to the site during the course of that game.
The Brazil-Germany match was the second most talked about game on Facebook. Yet the most popular single moment of the 2014 World Cup was when Sami Khedira scored Germany’s fourth goal in seven minutes, giving them an inconceivable 5-0 lead.
The tweets and Facebook posts came from across the world, though Brazil and the U.S. were standout participants. Brazil accounted for about 11% and the U.S. nearly 12% of all Facebook users that interacted on the site during the final game. Below is an interactive heat map that shows the worldwide roar of tweets during the Germany-Argentina competition.
Television broadcasters have also had a record World Cup year. Univision reached over 54 million total viewers by the 12th day of the competition, surpassing the reach of the entire 2010 tournament.
Sunday’s match on ESPN averaged a 9.7 overnight rating, the third-highest for any World Cup final on ESPN/ABC. Both broadcasters have yet to release viewership numbers for the final match and overall competition.
