Wimbledon and Social Media – Match Point

Nick Powell

July 10, 2015

This year Wimbledon has increased its use and appearance on social media, it has started to use more platforms that were not previously used as well as new techniques to promote and to market the event. This year Wimbledon has utilised Twitter, Vine, Periscope and Instagram using new features of these platforms such as new emoji’s specially created for the event and Twitter’s new auto amplify tool for playing short advertising videos.

In 2012 Twitter reported more than 2.5 million tweets about Wimbledon during the two weeks when the event took place, this figure was significantly increased to 6.6 million during the two weeks of the event in 2013, Facebook also reported 20 million posts comments and ‘likes’ relating to the competition and the mobile phone provider EE said there was a 39% increase in traffic on its 4G servers during the men’s final on the seventh of July. Social media creates new commercial, marketing and communication opportunities, this therefore creates the chance to build a community with the fans of the sport .

The use of Twitter’s auto amplify tool allows Wimbledon and its sponsors to market themselves through the short videos which play when hovered over on the user’s timeline also the new Twitter emojis will change throughout the fortnight encouraging users to use the Wimbledon hashtag therefore further promoting the event. The use of Vine also helped promote the Wimbledon hashtag by sharing short and varied 6 second videos of the event. Wimbledon has also got a lot of attention on Instagram by posting high quality images of the event which each received a huge amount of likes and comments.

Wimbledon is using a social media monitoring software so they can monitor and engage with users of social media, specifically users of twitter Facebook and Google +, that are discussing the tennis tournament.

It really goes to show that it is worth investing time and money in social media as it can have a huge impact in promoting, advertising and boosting the popularity of an event as well as creating a broader reach for the event sponsors, helping them target different customer demographics.

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