Athletes were not the only ones vying for gold at the Rio Olympics. Brands big and small have been trying to capture the attention of a highly engaged, global, second-screen audience, which spent more time getting score updates online than ever before.

Fans sentiment towards Rio Olympics 2016 on social channels was noisier than any other recent Games. Social media got fans closer to the action at the Olympics than ever before. Sponsors of the games got their fair share of buzz, too. This makes sense for marketers and advertisers to understand the existing drumbeat of discussion around an event like the Olympics, even if it has nothing to do with a brand.

Olympics Advertisers

When it comes to Olympics advertisers earning social and digital buzz, Coca-Cola and Nike took top honors at the just-completed Summer Olympics in Rio. Social intelligence company Brandwatch focused on Twitter, monitoring tweets that mentioned both the Olympics and one of its official sponsor. As illustrated below; Coca-Cola beat out McDonald’s with about 12,000 mentions during the summer games.

The top five overall from Brandwatch’s data are as follows:

• Coca-Cola: ~12,000 mentions
• McDonald’s: ~11,700 mentions
• Visa: ~8,200 mentions
• Samsung: ~6,200 mentions
• Omega: ~4,300 mentions
• Sources of interactionsThe interactions of fans were mainly geared towards Facebook (24.6%) followed by Twitter (13.1%), YouTube (11%), Instagram (9%) and Snapchat (7.9%). However, it should be noted that more than half of social media followers (56.8%) were not keeping track of Olympics.Social Media Followers – Gender breakdown 

  Women in particular were being inspired by what they have seen at the Olympics this year. Looking at gender-categorized authors, it was found that men were mostly talking about the Games online. But, when looking specifically at mentions of “inspir-” and “motivat-” (‘-‘representing variations of the end of the word), it should be highlighted that women were out-mentioning men.

  

  Social Media Followers – Sporty social buzz

  Gymnastics and swimming continue to dominate as the top two mentioned sports in the Olympics conversation, while tennis, soccer and badminton have also attracted thousands of mentions.

  Sporty social buzz – Gender Breakdown 

  Breaking it down percentage-wise by gender, men are out-mentioning women massively when it comes to boxing, golf and basketball while women are more likely to discuss gymnastics and swimming more than men. Diving appears to be the most balanced of the top ten when it comes to gender-categorized mentions.

  

  Record Breaking Athletes

  United States (US) swimmer Katie Ledecky was the most mentioned athlete online with 64,100 mentions followed by male athlete Adam Peaty with 24,100 mentions.  Accordingly, positive sentiment in tweets prevailed for Simone Biles (96%), Simone Manuel (86%), Katie Ledecky (86%) and for UK golf player Justin Rose (95%) followed by Mo Farah (84%) and 78% for both Michael Jung and Michael Phelps. Twitter analysis towards specific adjectives related to the female athlete Katie Ledecky was “The unreal Katie Ledecky”.

  

  Athletes share of interactions on Facebook

  As illustrated below, the interactions of fans were mainly towards Michael Phelps (27%), which was as twice as that of Andy Murray (14%).

  

  Athletes share of interactions on Twitter

  The most mentioned athletes were Michael Phelps and Serena Williams. Accordingly, a gender-wise breakdown of positive sentiment in tweets prevailed for Simone Biles (96%), Simone Manuel (86%), Katie Ledecky (86%) and for UK golf player Justin Rose (95%) followed by Mo Farah (84%) and 78% for both Michael Jung and Michael Phelps.

  Across all sports, athletes and coaches are increasingly working with big data and analytics to squeeze every last insight out of every drop of data available.

  We thank you for your interest in our Blog Post. Our Analytics Team will be pleased to review how Sentiment Analysis can help you reach the next level of performance in your online brand management. For further inquiries or requests, please contact Shamin on: 2331636 , via e-mail: shamin.bodhy@angloenterprises.com, or via LinkedIn: https://mu.linkedin.com/in/shamin-bodhy-1bba249a