World Cup Opener on Facebook

The World Cup kicked off on Thursday, and Facebook’s data team looked at the volume of global conversation around the opening match between Brazil and Croatia, along with the top social moments, demos, countries, and most-talked-about players. Check out the following data points, along with a selection of standout content from the first day of the tournament.

Globally, over 58 million people had more than 140 million Facebook interactions related to Brazil’s win over Croatia in the opening match of the World Cup. This includes about 16 million Brazilians who had more than 40 million Facebook interactions about the match, representing nearly 30% of Facebook daily actives in the host country.

Neymar dominated the top two most-talked-about moments of the game, when he scored Brazil’s first goal to even the match, and later when he took the lead on a penalty kick. The spike in conversation at the final whistle ranked third, and goals by Oscar and Marcelo rounded out the Top 5 social moments. Neymar was also the most-mentioned player on Facebook during the game, followed by Oscar, Thiago Silva, Hulk and Marcelo. Check out the following lists to see who was doing the talking, and where were they having conversations:

Celebrities, athletes, and other public figures joined the conversation in a big way during the opener. Jennifer Lopez posted some behind-the-scenes video from her dressing room before the opening ceremony, Leo Messi showed fans how he was taking in the first match, and Kaka caught some big plays with his cell phone from the stands: