Alibaba records 100 million users during WC

Pune: The consumption of football-related content touched 100 million on Alibaba-owned UC Browser during the recently concluded FIFA World Cup with Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo emerging as the most popular player with a popularity index of 5.6 million.

This was revealed in a joint data trends report compiled by UCWeb and Paytm.

The joint data trend revealed that France versus Argentina was the most watched match of the World Cup and England emerged as the most popular team of FIFA World Cup 2018, followed by Argentina and  the host nation Russia.

Among the individual players Lionel Messi, Neymar, Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah were the other top-rated players. 

The top 3 most popular topics which highlight the world cup content consumption were, France v Croatia (Final Match) followed by Argentina v France (Qualifier) with an influence index of 1.7 lakh.

Commenting on the insights from the report, Damon Xi, General Manager - India and Indonesia, UCWeb, Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group said, “The 2018 World Cup in Russia has seen a record number of soccer fans tuning in on a variety of devices.

“This year’s World Cup has proven to be a record-breaking event with mobile internet driving consumption of digital football and sports content. We aim to empower our media partners and advertisers to leverage these insights and better locate their audience,” he added.

FIFA World Cup v IPL
There was 1.5 lakh hours of accumulated video viewership on football, but the Indian Premier League is still the most popular sports tournament leading with a popularity index of 420 million over FIFA World Cup which is at 320 million.

Video remains one of the most popular formats of content consumption receiving a total of 1.5 lakh hours of cumulative video viewership, equivalent to a time span of 17 years. 

Meanwhile UC Platform witnessed maximum traction from the cities of Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Guwahati.