MOSCOW: The FIFA World Cup 2018 has gathered steam on digital platforms, smashing records of previous editions. World football’s governing body announced on Friday that more than 130 million fans have used its official website, FIFA.com and specially designated app for the tournament in Russia at the halfway mark.
FIFA’s social media platforms have recorded more than 120 million followers. It has gained more than 10 million new fans for its official World Cup pages on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, VKontakte and Weibo. VKontakte alone has 1 million followers.
Russian fans have spent at an average of 40 minutes each day on FIFA’s digital platforms, which is the highest amongst all nations this time.
As reported earlier, the FIFA App continues to top the charts in 128 countries.
On its social media accounts for the tournament, FIFA has introduced a special community management service, answering more than 100,000 questions of fans related to the competition. New innovative ways of storytelling, such as visual stories and a match report service in International Sign Language, have also attracted a large amount and variety of fans.
Each team in the competition has a dedicated match reporter, who will customize covering the matches played in depth, for the fans of that nation. These reporters are followed across 16 languages on Twitter and have engaged 200,000 fans in Facebook groups, with Argentina and Brazil the top two nations in that respect.
