An in-depth analysis of the social buzz surrounding the match between Tottenham and Manchester City at Etihad Stadium in September 2014. The analysis was part of a PR Week feature, showing the different possibilities offered by social listening and social analytics around different events.
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Sentiment Analysis: Tottenham vs Manchester City
1. Match highlights
Man City vs.
Tottenham
4 - 1
October 18, 2014 @ Etihad Stadium
13:45 (GMT +1)
2. Index
I. Management summary
II. Detailed report
a) The unexpected
b) Zoom on sentiment
c) #analysis of the
teams
d) Every cloud has a
silver lining
e) UK vs. Worldwide
f) Pundits
g) Influencers on earned
media
h) Influencers on owned
media
i) Buzz (all media types)
j) How to tackle a player
k) Demographics
5. GENERIC THEME CLOUDS
Top themes: City ranked 1° with
43,325 results
A look at the players for Manchester
City. Clearly, the hype was
concentrated around the man of the
game
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
Top pundits: a battle of tweets
between Jamie Carragher and Rio
Ferdinand
A look at the players for
Tottenham. Unlike for Man City, the
players most talked about were the
ones whose match wasn’t praised.
*Highlighted in green are the very positive results, in yellow neutral results and
in red the results letting away a more negative mood or impression
6. TOP THEMES
CONCERNING
ALL THE GAMES
TOP MEDIAS.
TWITTER SWEPT
THE BOARD!
TOP THEMES
CONCERNING
ALL THE GAMES
OF ALL THE GAMES OF THE PREMIER LEAGUE
MONITORED ON SATURDAY, MAN CITY VS. TOTTENHAM
WAS THE ONE WITH THE HIGHEST SHARE IN SOCIAL AND
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
ONLINE MEDIA
7. RESULTS SHOWING THE SHARE OF
TOPICS
The peak of mentions for Manchester
City coincided with the first 2 goals
scored by Aguero.
On the right a specimen of the results
carrying the highest engagement
coinciding with the peak is shown.
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
8. Only Twitter is considered for these
metrics.
The match itself and Manchester players
and management were the topics that
had people talk and engage online.
The chart on the left hand side shows
how the two topics had quite the same
reach and engagement: they could
potentially reach 300 million people
worldwide and engage 20 thousand.
BUZZ DURING THE GAME: AMOUNT OF HYPE
THE GAME STIRRED ON TWITTER
UK Worldwide
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
9. BUZZ FOR THE CITIZENS: AMOUNT OF HYPE
THE GAME STIRRED ON TWITTER
UK Worldwide
BUZZ FOR THE HOTSPURS: AMOUNT OF HYPE
TUKHE GAME STIRRED ON TWITTER Worldwide
Intuitive user interface with interactive graphs. Please note that for the two teams, regardless of the country considered, the following on Twitter was
strictly related to the match: during the interval a negative spike in results is found, to be swiftly recovered by an opposite spike when the referee starts
the second half of the game.
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
12. DURING THE GAME TWITTER WAS USED,
WHEREAS BEFORE AND AFTER THE GAME
ALSO OTHER SOURCES, SUCH AS ONLINE
NEWS, WERE CONSIDERED.
Results sorted by media types
THE UNEXPECTED
13. A post-hoc monitoring had to be
carried out, due to the impossibility of
forecasting rare events such as those
which took place on the occasion of
Saturday’s game. A more consistent
focus on sentiment will be delivered in
the dedicated set of slides.
WHO COULD’VE EVER THOUGHT IT
THE UNEXPECTED COULD HAPPEN?
15. SENTIMENT REGARDING THE MATCH
In this case the negative spike is
connected to the word «penalty»,
which is considered negative by
default. By taking a closer look,
though, there are negative
impressions and positive
impressions. After all, it’s a football
match with two teams playing
against one another.
UK Worldwide
Top 25 positive emotions connected
to the spike
SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE
PITCH)
Top 25 negative emotions connected
to the spike
16. Here are some of the results defining
as «impressive» Aguero’s
performance, and mentioning
penalties as well. By the way, who
couldn’t in such a match?
SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE
PITCH)
17. SENTIMENT REGARDING
MAN CITY
Clearly, sentiment, especially if monitored on
the pitch, follows the most impressive topics
and players. Even if Aguero played well, he’s
mentioned even when the sentiment is
negative.
On the right is an example of this.
The question is: negative for whom?
SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE
PITCH)
Top emotions and themes
Worldwide
UK Worldwide
18. SENTIMENT REGARDING
TOTTENHAM
UK Worldwide
For the Hotspurs the sentiment
is far worse than for the Citizens.
It’s due to the high occurrence of
words such as «penalty», «red
card», and descriptions of
player’s positive performance,
who was referred to as «terrible»
even in positive occurrences.
See following slide
SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE
PITCH)
19. Here’s an excerpt of what the most
engaging comments regarding the
Spurs sound like.
Many seem to be negative towards the
players’ performance.
SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE
PITCH)
20. The mentions for the referee follow the
hottest and most delicate moments of
the game.
Most likely the negative comments are
from Tottenham fans – unhappy with
the outcome of the game.
SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE
PITCH)
21. REFEREE-RELATED TOPICS:
PENALTIES AND CARDS
Penalties – perceived in the UK A tweet by the Premier League Twitter account had a huge
SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE
PITCH)
impact and was retweeted several times:
Penalties – perceived worldwide
22. Red card – perceived in the UK
Red card – perceived worldwide
SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE
PITCH)
The majority of comments in this case doesn’t mention directly
the referee, but focuses on the card itself.
A tweet by @FootballStuff had a big impact on the followers
who retweeted quickly.
23. Results A GLIMPSE ON @FOOTBALL
STUFF ONLINE ACTIVITY
Admin activity
SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE
PITCH)
They were active ONLY on Saturday, mainly
with pictures, links and text contents.
Despite their meagre activity, they stirred the
audience, which was prone to sending
retweets and mentions.
Audience activity
25. SHARE OF NEGATIVE VS. POSITIVE SENTIMENT
WORLDWIDE
THE GAME HASHTAGWAS #MCITOT
Sentiment for Man City
#
#ANALYSIS OF THE TEAMS
Sentiment for the match #
Sentiment for Tottenham
#
General hashtags related to the match generated mainly negative
results – due to the penalty as can be seen in the tweets below. The
Tottenham fans stayed on the positive side of the game despite
loosing.
26. A LOOK AT THE EMOTIONS PEOPLE SHARED
AND THE MOST INTERESTING TOPICS
Top hashtags for the
game
Top hashtags for
Tottenham
#ANALYSIS OF THE TEAMS
Top emotions connected to
hashtags
Top hashtags for Man City
28. AN EXPLANATORY NOTE ABOUT SENTIMENT
AND HOWIT’SMEASURED
SENTIMiEs mNeTasured starting from a set of predefined words, which are categorized automatically by our algorithm. In cases
such as this, where a strong emotional content is conveyed, the accuracy reaches 70-80%. Nonetheless, in this case
the word «penalty» is highlighted as negative.
No need to despair, though. By applying filters and cross-sifting the results with the range of human emotions –broken
down into positive and negative ones- the accuracy increases dramatically. On top of that, emotions provide a more
human feel to an otherwise quite aseptic categorization.
Let’s take a look at negative results for the match
EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER
LINING
29. IN-DEPTHANALYSIS OF A NEGATIVE SPIKE
Let’s take a look at when negative results
occurred
From the right hand excerpt of results, it can be
clearly seen how the game, despite being fun for
watchers, stirred lower emotions.
EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER
LINING
30. THE IMPORTANCE OF GIVING EMOTIONS THE
RIGHT VALUE
Excerpt of results by filtering with positive
emotions.
In cases characterized by high emotional content
such as this, results need further refining, as that
which we’re showing in these slides.
Range of positive emotions found in articles
categorized as negative at the beginning:
EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER
LINING
32. UK VS WORLDWIDE
GLOBAL MONITORING: THE MAPAND THE
TERRITORY
Globally, Man City - Tottenhamn was the most talked about topic, closely followed by Man City’s team.
Interestingly, the US talked slightly more about the game than Europe did.
35. PUNDITS
SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCE OF PUNDITS
Vincent Kompany Player follower base increased the most during the
game whereas Ruud Gullit lost more than 500 followers.
Top influencers during the match -among the pundits
36. PUNDITS
PUNDITS’ TWITTER RESULTS DURINGTHE
MATCH
There were three pundits who stood out of the crowd,
sharing the most followed comments, which allowed
them to engage with the audience during the match.
37. WHO TWEETED MORE AND WHO WAS MOST INFLUENTIAL –
FILTERED BY MATCH-RELATED FILTERS AND WITHIN A SPECIFIC
PUNDITS
TIME FRAME
Pundits on Twitter during the match
38. PUNDITS
EMOTIONALLY SPEAKING
Emotions within pundits tweets – the positive
emotions are more striking than the negative.
Emotions within pundits tweets: positive emotions
Emotions within pundits tweets: negative emotions
39. PUNDITS
JAMIE CARRAGHER
Jamie was highly active during the match and quite positive in his comments as
well.
Only during the game Jamie earned over 600 new
followers!
40. PUNDITS
RIO FERDINAND
Even though Rio Ferdinand was positive towards the game he also expressed
some negative feelings – the sentiment clearly shifted during the course of the
game.
41. II.g Any other
influencers?
On & off-the-pitch conversations
42. OVERVIEW OF MOST AUTHORITATIVE
INFLUENCERS, OWNEDAND EARNEDMEDIA
Influencers on all media types, worldwide, sorted by engagement, i.e. their capacity to engage people in conversation
INFLUENCERS
43. INFLUENCERS
AGLIMPSE ON THE SPORT
BIBLE ONLINE ACTIVITY
Activity
Content appreciation
Owner activity: very few results, with a huge impact
Static content is king on Facebook. Videos
are meant for an audience who will watch
that content after the game, without the risk
of getting lost in the flow of messages, as
happens on Twitter.
44. Unlike Twitter, the activity on
Facebook is slower, but can
reach thousands –if not
millions- of people, even
more if a page boasts 3.6
million fans like this one.
Through their Facebook
page, The Sport Bible
shared different content and
don’t aim to report or
comment the game in real
time.
INFLUENCERS
45. Influencers on Twitter, worldwide, sorted by engagement, i.e. their capacity to engage people in
conversation
INFLUENCERS
46. Results regarding Premier League Twitter’s profile
INFLUENCERS
Content appreciation: thousands of retweets made by
users
Even the audience activity is concentrated from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
(G.M.T. +1)
47. INFLUENCERS
Below an excerpt of his activity of Premier
League’s account can be seen. They have a
large follow, therefore people tend to retweet
their content shared on this page.
Top themes related to the negative sentiment spike
48. INFLUENCERS
This user has a big follow on Twitter (590K), therefore
although he tweets just on Saturday, his tweets have
a wide echo online.
He shares mainly textual content which his followers
appreciate and share with others, making him one of
the most influential players on Twitter as far as football
is concerned.
49. On the right hand side of the slide an excerpt of
his activity and how it propagates is shown. A
tweet sent by Opta Joe’s account have a domino
effect on Twitter, leading to several retweets.
INFLUENCERS
50. INFLUENCERS
The same tweet was retweeted hundreds of times, and the word
deadly perceived as negative.
Again, the line between sarcasm and literal meaning is rather thin
and depends on the views of who utters it.
51. TOP INFLUENCERS BELONGING TO
TRADITIONAL PRESS, SORTED BY
ENGAGEMENT, I.E. THEIR CAPACITY TO
ENGAGE PEOPLE IN CONVERSATION
INFLUENCERS
52. Just two publications were made by The
Mirror during the game, but these two have
a potential impact which exceeds by far the
one of Twitter and Facebook sources, and
an engagement which was higher than that
which other online newspapers can boast.
Detail of negative sentiment
INFLUENCERS
Top emotions found in these two articles
53. II.h Who are the
influencers?
On & off-the-pitch conversations –
54. TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR –
FACEBOOK PROFILE
A lot of the activity was made by the audience
Content appreciation was very high: Facebook likes during
the match and immediately after can be counted by the
thousands
INFLUENCERS
55. TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR –
FACEBOOK PROFILE
Audience peaks coincide with the busiest sports hours
And so does the owner’s activity
INFLUENCERS
The content people like to share on Facebook
consists mainly of pictures and text.
56. TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR –
FACEBOOK PROFILE
Hotspurs’ fans talked a lot about Aguero and other
players belonging to the opponent team.
INFLUENCERS
Here are the emotions the match stirred in HotSpurs’ fans.
Not surprisingly, they were sort of unhappy with the result.
Sentiment shared on the official Facebook page
during the event
57. TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR –
FACEBOOK PROFILE
A hands-on view of
negative sentiment
towards the Spurs, as
expressed on their
Facebook page during the
match.
INFLUENCERS
59. BUZZ
WORLDWIDE VIEWON REACHAND
ENGAGEMENT FOR DIFFERENT TOPICS
VIEWON REACHAND ENGAGEMENT FOR
DIFFERENT TOPICS IN THE UK
60. BUZZ
BUZZ ON ALLMEDIA FOR THE MATCH
(ON AND OFF THE PITCH)
The interest in the UK
mirrors almost perfectly the
one found on a global scale.
Total buzz worldwide. It refers to the total amount of
hype generated by the topic analysed. The
percentage is referred to the rise in results with
respect to the six hours prior to the match.
Total buzz in the UK
61. Total engagement in the UK
Total engagement in the rest of the world
BUZZ
Surprisingly, in this case the
figures related to the UK
aren’t set in the shade by
those of the rest of the
world.
In the UK the match had a
really big follow.
62. Total buzz in the UK
Comparing the Buzz in the UK with the rest of the world, they follow the same curve time-wise
Total engagement in the
UK
BUZZ
BUZZ ON ALLMEDIA FOR MAN CITY
(ON AND OFF THE PITCH)
Total buzz in the rest of the world
Total engagement in the rest of the
world
Comparing the engagement, we can see that people in the UK reacted to way more situations while we find one peak in the rest of the
world
63. BUZZ
BUZZ ON ALLMEDIA FOR TOTTENHAM
(ON AND OFF THE PITCH)
Total buzz in the UK
Total engagement in the
UK
Total buzz worldwide
Total engagement worldwide
The engagement during the game for the UK is more consistent with the timing of the event with respect to the
rest of the world. This may tell us that the Brits just followed the game more attentively and wanted to share their
views in real time, or even check for what pundits had to say, as the following slides will show.
65. The players the audience focused on.
Clearly Aguero is by far considered the man of
the match, and he was quoted mainly on
Twitter.
HOW TO TACKLE A PLAYER
What the net thinks about Aguero
Positive impressions towards Aguero exceed negative emotions. Where they’re
found in relation to him, they’re referred to the other team being, for example,
incapable of doing something.
67. FINALLY, WHATAGUERO SAIDAND HOWIT
WAS PERCEIVED BY THE NET
HOW TO TACKLE A PLAYER
Sentiment as expressed by his
followers on his Twitter account.
Thanks to his performance and to
his wide follow on Twitter,
Aguero’s tweets were well
perceived online.
68. The player tweeted in English and
Spanish, his native language.
Given his impressive follow on
Twitter -7.5 million people-, his
messages reached a lot of people
and engaging with them came
naturally.
HOW TO TACKLE A PLAYER
69. HOW TO TACKLE A PLAYER
Interestingly, people starting engaging on
Aguero’s Twitter account after the match,
mainly in response to his own tweets.
Top influencers on his Twitter profile, ranked by engagement.
Can you spot any famous names?
71. DEMOGRAPHICS AND
GENDER
In Europe, the game was by far discussed the most in the UK. In
particular the referee was the most talked about in the UK.
Maybe not surprisingly, more men than women talked about the
game.
73. FILTERS Filters enable you to add further restrictions to your topics. This can greatly
help focus on one or more elements of the results.
APPENDIX
CALLINGA SPADE A SPADE
ENGAGEM
ENT
The engagement of an article/post is the sum of actions made by others on
that article/post. The engagement of a topic is the sum of the engagement of
all articles/posts of the topic.
ENGAGEMENT
RATE
Facebook Engagement Rate: ((Number of Likes + Number of Comments +
Number of Shares by others) / Number of Fans) * 100
Twitter Engagement Rate: ((Number of Retweets by others) / Number of
Follows) * 100
Engagement is calculated in the following ways:
Blogs; News Sites; Forums: Number of Facebook Likes + Number of
Comments on the article + Number of Shares on Facebook of the URL +
Number of Tweets on Twitter of the URL
Facebook: Sum of shares, likes and comments
Twitter: Number of Retweets
MEDIA TYPE Media in which the article/post was published. Media types can be news
(and its sub categories), blogs, forums, social media networks, …
74. REACH The reach of an article/post represents the number of people who were
reached by this article/post.
Note that the views only get set to a proper value if the host of the URL is
either a domain (like theguardian.com) or if it is a domain with a well-known
3rd-level-subdomain in front (mainly applies to www, e.g.
www.theguardian.com). Reach is set to 0 for other hosts, i.e. hosts with
other 3rd-level-subdomains, like on foobar.blogspot.com, as using the Alexa
views of the domain would assign much too high reach to mere sub-hosts
otherwise.
Reach is calculated in the ways:
Blogs; News Sites; Forums: Number of Page Views
Facebook: The Number of Fans of the Page (Note: Only available for public
pages)
Twitter: The number of Followers of the author
SENTIMENSeTntiment that is associated with an article/post. As default, a generic
sentiment analysis is being calculated for each result based on our own
sentiment analysis. All articles/posts are then attributed a positive, neutral or
negative sentiment.
TOPIC A topic contains the keywords and phrases you wish to search for within
posts and articles, in the form of search queries. The first topic is usually
your brand and subsequent topics are typically competitor brands.
APPENDIX
75. Alvise De Nardi
Account manager for IT, ES and LATAM
Email: alvise@talkwalker.com
Telephone: +352 203 335 3924