Sunday's Clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid -- which Barcelona won 2-1 -- "was played not only at the Camp Nou, but also on Twitter," according to Luis Alberto Díaz of MARCA. Tweets registered under the hashtag #ElClásico were seen more than 400 million times, "which shows the global reach" of the Clásico. Both clubs were mentioned more than 160,000 times during the 90-minute match. NBA players including Kobe Bryant of the L.A. Lakers and Pau Gasol of the Chicago Bulls were among athletes in other sports who tweeted about the game.
The messages that were most retweeted included one from the @realmadrid account about a goal by Cristiano Ronaldo, which got 22,044 retweets. The official Barcelona account's tweet announcing the end of the game had 14,969 retweets (
MARCA, 3/23). In Madrid, Carmen Colino reported on Facebook, 22 million people had more than 58 million interactions about the game. During the match between the two in October, 14 million people had 31 million interactions. The U.S. was "curiously" the country where the most conversation was generated on Facebook, "showing that football is steadily gaining a bigger presence among Americans." The U.S. was followed by Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Spain, Turkey, Colombia, Argentina, Guatemala and Morocco. The "most-commented moment of the game on Facebook was the final whistle, which produced a peak of 224,000 people per minute commenting on the 2-1 result" (
AS, 3/23).
