SEA Games: Football is the most associated sport
Football has been the sport most associated with the SEA Games which kicked off in Singapore on June 5. The 28th SEA Games are being hosted in Singapore after a 22 year hiatus and will go on till June 16, 2015.
Volleyball got 83 per cent association with the SEA Games as The Philippines demanding that a female Indonesian volleyball player be tested for gender, according to the data released by Amobee.
The Triathlon around both the men and women’s competition was ranked the number three sport most associated with the SEA Games, while Swimming was ranking number four, and Boxing was ranked number five most associated to the games.
According to Amobee’s data, Sharon Au’s misstep, where the emcee of the 2015 SEA Games Opening Ceremony had a racial insensitive interaction with an Indian girl in the audience, hasn’t cast too long of a shadow over the games. Only two per cent of all SEA Games consumption between June 5-9 was related to Sharon Au.
The data highlighted that english language consumption of the SEA Games isn’t necessarily that tied to the medal count. Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam are currently ranking 1,2,3 in medal count with Singapore also the hosting country. However, in terms of association to the SEA Games between June 5-9; while Singapore is still #1, the Philippines is ranking #2, and Malaysia is ranking #3 with Vietnam only the country #6 most associated with the SEA Games.
While the Indonesian volleyball player accounts for at least some of the reason why there’s proportionally more consumption around the Philippines relative to their win total; it’s also worth noting that English is an official language in Singapore and the Philippines while it isn’t in Vietnam.
According to the data by Amobee, there’s more interest in the SEA Games as a cultural event as opposed to a sporting competition. Average consumption around the event decreased by 14 per cent during June 7-9 compared to June 5-6 when people were discussing the opening ceremonies.
The highlight around football helped build the profile of local Singapore based soccer teams (such as Harimau Muda, Home United, Balestier Khalsa & Tampines Rovers) who have seen consumption around their teams double over the last two weeks (26th May to 7th June) in comparison to the two weeks prior to the SEA Games.
The report suggests that brands currently looking to capitalise on the SEA games should look at those participants who are highly associated to SEA Gold Medals as they achieve higher positive sentiment. Josie Gabuco the former world champion boxer was ranked #1, Carlo Biado the billiards player #2, Khairul Fahmi Che Mat the Malaysian goalkeeper #3 & the Muhammad Amirul Adli Bin Azmi #4 as Singaporean all highly associated with SEA Gold.
SEA Games dominated in terms of social counts, recording up to 19K social mentions on June 5.
Fandi and #InspiringSG were some of the top trending topics and hashtags garnering up to hundred social mentions during the Opening Ceremony.
From June 3-9, consumption of Joseph Schooling has increased by 731 per cent with coverage of him being picked up in key environments such as the Straits Times & Channel News Asia. Out of all of the major Singaporean swimmers Joseph Schooling created the strongest association with the sport being 47 per cent more likely to be associated with swimming than Zheng Wen & 110 per cent more likely to be associated than Tao Li who also both won a gold in this year’s SEA Games. Twitter activity around Joseph Schooling peaked when news broke of Joseph Schooling dedicating his gold win to the children who passed away at Tanjong Katong Primary School, which received 24 per cent (average 5 per cent) of all retweets around Joseph Schooling during the competition.
The report highlights that twitter activity around the hashtag #InspiringSG increased by 5700 per cent during the Opening Ceremony between 8:00pm – 11:00pm. The peak occurred around 8:50, just after Nila the mascot made an appearance in the Opening Ceremony. All social mentions were positive for this period.
Benjamin Kheng, Shigga Shay and Dick Lee were some of the top mentioned artists. Benjamin Kheng had the highest social mentions of the night, hitting around 180 social counts within an hour.
