Chelsea FC defeat and sacking generates 2.5m Twitter mentions

Football Social Media yet again showed how influential it was today with the news that Chelsea FC had recorded an astonishing 2.5 million mentions in less than 24 hours. The current European champions have had a traumatic 24 hours – starting with last nights 3-0 defeat to Juventus, their highest Champions League loss ever. Then, this morning the Blues announced that their manager Roberto Di Matteo had become the 8th manager in 9 years to be sacked by the club – with the tweet being retweeted over 5,000 times.

Twitter covered the busy day on their UK blog, highlighting the following as key stats:

• ‣ The mentions spiked at about 9am today in the UK when Chelsea broke the news of their managers sacking via Twitter
• ‣ ‘Chelsea’ as a keyword was tweeted over 1 million times
• ‣ Chelsea dominated the Twitter trends – with up to 5 individual items trending about the story in the UK, followed by it trending worldwide
• ‣ The story also trended worldwide

This is a prime example of how powerful Social Media channels have become in football. The fact that Chelsea chose to break the news about Di Matteo’s sacking via Twitter shows how much times have changed, whereas previously print, radio and television would’ve been first to the bite.

Chelsea Football Club has parted company this morning with manager Roberto Di Matteo. More to follow… #CFC

— Chelsea FC (@chelseafc) November 21, 2012

It also demonstrates how popular Social Media is for vocal fans and has quickly become the new alternative to the radio “phone-in”. Twitter offers fans the ability to discuss, share and argue about their favourite teams and players, as well as interact with influential figures in the games such as journalists, players and pundits.