Case Study
Here’s who made the Champions League Final happen on Twitter
The Champions League, the annual tournament organized by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), is one of the most prestigious and exciting European football club competitions, with top teams from across the continent playing each other for the prestigious title of Champions of Europe.
This year the tournament's final was extra special for UK fans, as both teams — Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur — are English. Fans from around the world turned to Twitter to support their club and favorite players, and the two weeks around the final generated over 7.7 million Tweets.
For Kevin Ashby, UEFA’s senior digital content manager, a change in social strategy leading into the 2019-2020 season has already scored for the association. "We've refined our Twitter strategy over the last 18 months, reducing the volume of Tweets by 16% but driving up engagement by 37% and video views by more than 250% by focusing on the bigger moments,” he says. With another UEFA Champions League campaign and UEFA EURO 2020 on the horizon, Twitter “will again be key for helping us achieve our digital objectives and enabling us to lead the conversation around our competitions on the platform.”
Along with UEFA, three other Twitter accounts dominated the Champions League conversation — here’s how each one made this a #UCLfinal to remember.
UEFA
During the week of the Champions League Final, fans were able to join the conversation by Tweeting #UCLfinal and seeing the iconic silver trophy appear in their Tweets. The hashtag was used more than 1.6 million times globally, and on the night of the final, UEFA changed their display name to #UCLfinal so users around the world would know this was the official hashtag to use. This also made it easier for broadcasters, journalists, and VITs to know how to join the conversation.
Along with the emoji, UEFA leveraged the new Retweet with Media format to add more context to their Retweets. Ahead of the final, the league also created square videos with player stats and allowed users to vote via Twitter Polls on which player they thought performed best during the tournament. “From Liverpool’s first-minute penalty right through to the trophy parade and beyond, the engagement was fantastic and was a reward for the content planning and effort which we put into Twitter,” Ashby says.
Liverpool Football Club
Liverpool knew how to make fans feel right in the middle of the action, both in the buildup to the final and after their sixth #UCL win. They used Periscope to live-stream press conferences with team members and their manager, Jürgen Klopp; share live broadcasts of their match day show; and take fans behind the scenes with broadcasts of the team’s training sessions.
After their historic win, LFC used Twitter Video to share moments from the team’s Victory Parade in Liverpool. They used Media Studio’s new LiveCut tool to quickly share professional edited videos in their timeline, but also made sure to show a more intimate perspective from the team celebrating inside the parade car.
Tottenham Hotspur
Finalists Tottenham Hotspur consistently Tweeted using the team’s official hashtag #COYS (Come On You Spurs) throughout the tournament, ensuring fans could follow the conversation more easily.
Before the team secured their spot in the #UCLfinal, they played a dramatic semifinal match which saw them win in the last minutes of the match. Tottenham fans turned to Twitter to share their excitement, and the team collated them all in a Moment.
BT Sport
As the official UEFA Champions League broadcaster in the UK, BT Sport Tweeted near-live in-match highlights throughout the Champions League tournament so BT Sport Football followers wouldn’t miss any of the action.
They also leveraged long-form video with their #NoFilterUCL series. Each episode focused on either the buildup or wrap-up of a key Champions League match, and aimed to make people watching on Twitter feel like they were there with their favorite stars.
