Sentiment Analysis: Tottenham vs Manchester City

Match highlightsMan City vs. Tottenham

October 18, 2014 @ Etihad Stadium

13:45 (GMT +1)

4 1-

Index

I. Management summary

II. Detailed report

a) The unexpected

b) Zoom on sentiment

c) #analysis of the

teams

d) Every cloud has a

silver lining

e) UK vs. Worldwide

f) Pundits

g) Influencers on earned

media

h) Influencers on owned

media

i) Buzz (all media types)

j) How to tackle a player

k) Demographics

III. Appendix

GAME ON &

OFF THE

PITCH

I. Management

summary

GENERIC THEME CLOUDS

MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

A look at the players for Manchester City. Clearly, the hype wasconcentrated around the man of the game

Top themes: City ranked 1° with 43,325 results

Top pundits: a battle of tweetsbetween Jamie Carragher and Rio Ferdinand

A look at the players for Tottenham. Unlike for Man City, the players most talked about were the ones whose match wasn’t praised.

*Highlighted in green are the very positive results, in yellow neutral results andin red the results letting away a more negative mood or impression

TOP THEMES

CONCERNING

ALL THE GAMES

TOP MEDIAS.

TWITTER SWEPT

THE BOARD!

MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

TOP THEMES

CONCERNING

ALL THE GAMES

OF ALL THE GAMES OF THE PREMIER LEAGUE

MONITORED ON SATURDAY, MAN CITY VS. TOTTENHAM

WAS THE ONE WITH THE HIGHEST SHARE IN SOCIAL AND

ONLINE MEDIA

MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

RESULTS SHOWING THE SHARE OF

TOPICS

The peak of mentions for Manchester

City coincided with the first 2 goals

scored by Aguero.

On the right a specimen of the results

carrying the highest engagement

coinciding with the peak is shown.

Only Twitter is considered for these

metrics.

The match itself and Manchester players

and management were the topics that

had people talk and engage online.

The chart on the left hand side shows

how the two topics had quite the same

reach and engagement: they could

potentially reach 300 million people

worldwide and engage 20 thousand.

BUZZ DURING THE GAME: AMOUNT OF HYPE

THE GAME STIRRED ON TWITTER

MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

Worldwide UK

Intuitive user interface with interactive graphs. Please note that for the two teams, regardless of the country considered, the following on Twitter was

strictly related to the match: during the interval a negative spike in results is found, to be swiftly recovered by an opposite spike when the referee starts

the second half of the game.

BUZZ FOR THE CITIZENS: AMOUNT OF HYPE

THE GAME STIRRED ON TWITTER

MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

UK Worldwide

BUZZ FOR THE HOTSPURS: AMOUNT OF HYPE

THE GAME STIRRED ON TWITTERUK Worldwide

II. Detailed report

II.a The unexpected

Results sorted by media types

THE UNEXPECTED

DURING THE GAME TWITTER WAS USED,

WHEREAS BEFORE AND AFTER THE GAME

ALSO OTHER SOURCES, SUCH AS ONLINE

NEWS, WERE CONSIDERED.

A post-hoc monitoring had to be

carried out, due to the impossibility of

forecasting rare events such as those

which took place on the occasion of

Saturday’s game. A more consistent

focus on sentiment will be delivered in

the dedicated set of slides.

WHO COULD’VE EVER THOUGHT IT

COULD HAPPEN?THE UNEXPECTED

II.b Zoom on

sentiment (on

the pitch)

SENTIMENT REGARDING THE MATCH

In this case the negative spike is

connected to the word «penalty»,

which is considered negative by

default. By taking a closer look,

though, there are negative

impressions and positive

impressions. After all, it’s a football

match with two teams playing

against one another.

SENTIMENT ZOOM (ON THE

PITCH)

Top 25 positive emotions connectedto the spike

Top 25 negative emotions connectedto the spike

UK Worldwide

Here are some of the results defining

as «impressive» Aguero’s

performance, and mentioning

penalties as well. By the way, who

couldn’t in such a match?


PITCH)

Clearly, sentiment, especially if monitored on

the pitch, follows the most impressive topics

and players. Even if Aguero played well, he’s

mentioned even when the sentiment is

negative.

On the right is an example of this.

The question is: negative for whom?

SENTIMENT REGARDING

MAN CITY


PITCH)

Top emotions and themesWorldwide

UK Worldwide

For the Hotspurs the sentiment

is far worse than for the Citizens.

It’s due to the high occurrence of

words such as «penalty», «red

card», and descriptions of

player’s positive performance,

who was referred to as «terrible»

even in positive occurrences.

See following slide

SENTIMENT REGARDING

TOTTENHAM


PITCH)

UK Worldwide

Here’s an excerpt of what the most

engaging comments regarding the

Spurs sound like.

Many seem to be negative towards the

players’ performance.


PITCH)

The mentions for the referee follow the

hottest and most delicate moments of

the game.

Most likely the negative comments are

from Tottenham fans – unhappy with

the outcome of the game.


PITCH)


PITCH)

Penalties – perceived in the UK A tweet by the Premier League Twitter account had a huge

impact and was retweeted several times:

REFEREE-RELATED TOPICS:

PENALTIES AND CARDS

Penalties – perceived worldwide


PITCH)

Red card – perceived in the UK

Red card – perceived worldwide

The majority of comments in this case doesn’t mention directly

the referee, but focuses on the card itself.

A tweet by @FootballStuff had a big impact on the followers

who retweeted quickly.


PITCH)

Results A GLIMPSE ON @FOOTBALL

STUFF ONLINE ACTIVITY

Admin activity

They were active ONLY on Saturday, mainly

with pictures, links and text contents.

Despite their meagre activity, they stirred the

audience, which was prone to sending

retweets and mentions.

Audience activity

II.c #analysis of the

teams

#ANALYSIS OF THE TEAMS

SHARE OF NEGATIVE VS. POSITIVE SENTIMENT

WORLDWIDE

THE GAME HASHTAG WAS #MCITOT

Sentiment for Man City

#

Sentiment for the match #

Sentiment for Tottenham

#General hashtags related to the match generated mainly negative

results – due to the penalty as can be seen in the tweets below. The

Tottenham fans stayed on the positive side of the game despite

loosing.

#ANALYSIS OF THE TEAMS

A LOOK AT THE EMOTIONS PEOPLE SHARED

AND THE MOST INTERESTING TOPICSTop hashtags for the

game

Top hashtags for

Tottenham

Top hashtags for Man City

Top emotions connected to

hashtags

II.d Every cloud has

a silver lining

EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER

LINING

AN EXPLANATORY NOTE ABOUT SENTIMENT

AND HOW IT’S MEASURED

SENTIMENTis measured starting from a set of predefined words, which are categorized automatically by our algorithm. In cases

such as this, where a strong emotional content is conveyed, the accuracy reaches 70-80%. Nonetheless, in this case

the word «penalty» is highlighted as negative.

No need to despair, though. By applying filters and cross-sifting the results with the range of human emotions –broken

down into positive and negative ones- the accuracy increases dramatically. On top of that, emotions provide a more

human feel to an otherwise quite aseptic categorization.

Let’s take a look at negative results for the match


LINING

IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF A NEGATIVE SPIKE

Let’s take a look at when negative results

occurred

From the right hand excerpt of results, it can be

clearly seen how the game, despite being fun for

watchers, stirred lower emotions.


LINING

THE IMPORTANCE OF GIVING EMOTIONS THE

RIGHT VALUEExcerpt of results by filtering with positive

emotions.

In cases characterized by high emotional content

such as this, results need further refining, as that

which we’re showing in these slides.

Range of positive emotions found in articles

categorized as negative at the beginning:

II.e UK vs.

Worldwide

UK VS WORLDWIDE

GLOBAL MONITORING: THE MAPAND THE

TERRITORY

Globally, Man City - Tottenhamn was the most talked about topic, closely followed by Man City’s team.

Interestingly, the US talked slightly more about the game than Europe did.

INFLUENCERS

II.h Pundits

PUNDITS

SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCE OF PUNDITS

Top influencers during the match -among the pundits

Vincent Kompany Player follower base increased the most during the

game whereas Ruud Gullit lost more than 500 followers.

PUNDITS

PUNDITS’ TWITTER RESULTS DURING THE

MATCH

There were three pundits who stood out of the crowd,

sharing the most followed comments, which allowed

them to engage with the audience during the match.

PUNDITS

WHO TWEETED MORE AND WHO WAS MOST INFLUENTIAL –

FILTERED BY MATCH-RELATED FILTERS AND WITHIN A SPECIFIC

TIME FRAME

Pundits on Twitter during the match

PUNDITS

EMOTIONALLY SPEAKING

Emotions within pundits tweets – the positive

emotions are more striking than the negative.

Emotions within pundits tweets: positive emotions

Emotions within pundits tweets: negative emotions

PUNDITS

JAMIE CARRAGHER

Jamie was highly active during the match and quite positive in his comments as

well.

Only during the game Jamie earned over 600 new

followers!

PUNDITS

RIO FERDINAND

Even though Rio Ferdinand was positive towards the game he also expressed

some negative feelings – the sentiment clearly shifted during the course of the

game.

II.g Any other

influencers?On & off-the-pitch conversations

Focusing on earned media

INFLUENCERS

OVERVIEW OF MOST AUTHORITATIVE

INFLUENCERS, OWNED AND EARNED MEDIA

Influencers on all media types, worldwide, sorted by engagement, i.e. their capacity to engage people in conversation

INFLUENCERS

AGLIMPSE ON THE SPORT

BIBLE ONLINE ACTIVITYActivity

Content appreciation

Owner activity: very few results, with a huge impact

Static content is king on Facebook. Videos

are meant for an audience who will watch

that content after the game, without the risk

of getting lost in the flow of messages, as

happens on Twitter.

INFLUENCERS

Unlike Twitter, the activity on

Facebook is slower, but can

reach thousands –if not

millions- of people, even

more if a page boasts 3.6

million fans like this one.

Through their Facebook

page, The Sport Bible

shared different content and

don’t aim to report or

comment the game in real

time.

INFLUENCERS

Influencers on Twitter, worldwide, sorted by engagement, i.e. their capacity to engage people in

conversation

INFLUENCERS

Results regarding Premier League Twitter’s profile

Content appreciation: thousands of retweets made by

users

Even the audience activity is concentrated from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

(G.M.T. +1)

INFLUENCERS

Below an excerpt of his activity of Premier

League’s account can be seen. They have a

large follow, therefore people tend to retweet

their content shared on this page.

Top themes related to the negative sentiment spike

INFLUENCERS

This user has a big follow on Twitter (590K), therefore

although he tweets just on Saturday, his tweets have

a wide echo online.

He shares mainly textual content which his followers

appreciate and share with others, making him one of

the most influential players on Twitter as far as football

is concerned.

INFLUENCERS

On the right hand side of the slide an excerpt of

his activity and how it propagates is shown. A

tweet sent by Opta Joe’s account have a domino

effect on Twitter, leading to several retweets.

INFLUENCERS

The same tweet was retweeted hundreds of times, and the word

deadly perceived as negative.

Again, the line between sarcasm and literal meaning is rather thin

and depends on the views of who utters it.

INFLUENCERS

TOP INFLUENCERS BELONGING TO

TRADITIONAL PRESS, SORTED BY

ENGAGEMENT, I.E. THEIR CAPACITY TO

ENGAGE PEOPLE IN CONVERSATION

INFLUENCERS

Just two publications were made by The

Mirror during the game, but these two have

a potential impact which exceeds by far the

one of Twitter and Facebook sources, and

an engagement which was higher than that

which other online newspapers can boast.

Detail of negative sentiment

Top emotions found in these two articles

II.h Who are the

influencers?On & off-the-pitch conversations –

owned media

INFLUENCERS

A lot of the activity was made by the audience

Content appreciation was very high: Facebook likes during

the match and immediately after can be counted by the

thousands

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR –

FACEBOOK PROFILE

INFLUENCERS


FACEBOOK PROFILE

Audience peaks coincide with the busiest sports hours

And so does the owner’s activity

The content people like to share on Facebook

consists mainly of pictures and text.

INFLUENCERS


FACEBOOK PROFILE

Hotspurs’ fans talked a lot about Aguero and other

players belonging to the opponent team.

Here are the emotions the match stirred in HotSpurs’ fans.

Not surprisingly, they were sort of unhappy with the result.

Sentiment shared on the official Facebook page

during the event

INFLUENCERS


FACEBOOK PROFILE

A hands-on view of

negative sentiment

towards the Spurs, as

expressed on their

Facebook page during the

match.

II.i Buzz (all media

types)

BUZZ

WORLDWIDE VIEW ON REACH AND

ENGAGEMENT FOR DIFFERENT TOPICS

VIEW ON REACH AND ENGAGEMENT FOR

DIFFERENT TOPICS IN THE UK

BUZZ

BUZZ ON ALL MEDIA FOR THE MATCH

(ON AND OFF THE PITCH)

The interest in the UK

mirrors almost perfectly the

one found on a global scale.

Total buzz worldwide. It refers to the total amount of

hype generated by the topic analysed. The

percentage is referred to the rise in results with

respect to the six hours prior to the match.

Total buzz in the UK

BUZZ

Total engagement in the UK

Total engagement in the rest of the world

Surprisingly, in this case the

figures related to the UK

aren’t set in the shade by

those of the rest of the

world.

In the UK the match had a

really big follow.

BUZZ


Total engagement in the

UK

Total buzz in the rest of the world

Total engagement in the rest of the

world

BUZZ ON ALL MEDIA FOR MAN CITY


Comparing the Buzz in the UK with the rest of the world, they follow the same curve time-

wise

Comparing the engagement, we can see that people in the UK reacted to way more situations while we find one peak in the rest of the

world

BUZZ

BUZZ ON ALL MEDIA FOR TOTTENHAM



Total engagement in the

UK

Total buzz worldwide

The engagement during the game for the UK is more consistent with the timing of the event with respect to the

rest of the world. This may tell us that the Brits just followed the game more attentively and wanted to share their

views in real time, or even check for what pundits had to say, as the following slides will show.

Total engagement worldwide

II.j How to tackle a

player

HOW TO TACKLE A PLAYER

The players the audience focused on.

Clearly Aguero is by far considered the man of

the match, and he was quoted mainly on

Twitter.

What the net thinks about Aguero

Positive impressions towards Aguero exceed negative emotions. Where they’re

found in relation to him, they’re referred to the other team being, for example,

incapable of doing something.


Total buzz worldwide

WHO TALKED MOST ABOUTAGUERO,

AMONG THOSE WHO COUNT: A VIEW ON A

PUNDIT


FINALLY, WHATAGUERO SAID AND HOW IT

WAS PERCEIVED BY THE NET

Thanks to his performance and to

his wide follow on Twitter,

Aguero’s tweets were well

perceived online.

Sentiment as expressed by his

followers on his Twitter account.


The player tweeted in English and

Spanish, his native language.

Given his impressive follow on

Twitter -7.5 million people-, his

messages reached a lot of people

and engaging with them came

naturally.


Interestingly, people starting engaging on

Aguero’s Twitter account after the match,

mainly in response to his own tweets.

Top influencers on his Twitter profile, ranked by engagement.

Can you spot any famous names?

II.k

Demographics

and gender

DEMOGRAPHICS AND

GENDER

In Europe, the game was by far discussed the most in the UK. In

particular the referee was the most talked about in the UK.

Maybe not surprisingly, more men than women talked about the

game.

III. APPENDIX

APPENDIX

CALLING A SPADE A SPADE

ENGAGEM

ENT

The engagement of an article/post is the sum of actions made by others on

that article/post. The engagement of a topic is the sum of the engagement of

all articles/posts of the topic.

ENGAGEMENT

RATE

Facebook Engagement Rate: ((Number of Likes + Number of Comments +

Number of Shares by others) / Number of Fans) * 100

Twitter Engagement Rate: ((Number of Retweets by others) / Number of

Follows) * 100

Engagement is calculated in the following ways:

Blogs; News Sites; Forums: Number of Facebook Likes + Number of

Comments on the article + Number of Shares on Facebook of the URL +

Number of Tweets on Twitter of the URL

Facebook: Sum of shares, likes and comments

Twitter: Number of Retweets

MEDIA TYPE Media in which the article/post was published. Media types can be news

(and its sub categories), blogs, forums, social media networks, …

FILTERS Filters enable you to add further restrictions to your topics. This can greatly

help focus on one or more elements of the results.

APPENDIX

REACH The reach of an article/post represents the number of people who were

reached by this article/post.

Note that the views only get set to a proper value if the host of the URL is

either a domain (like theguardian.com) or if it is a domain with a well-known

3rd-level-subdomain in front (mainly applies to www, e.g.

www.theguardian.com). Reach is set to 0 for other hosts, i.e. hosts with

other 3rd-level-subdomains, like on foobar.blogspot.com, as using the Alexa

views of the domain would assign much too high reach to mere sub-hosts

otherwise.

Reach is calculated in the ways:

Blogs; News Sites; Forums: Number of Page Views

Facebook: The Number of Fans of the Page (Note: Only available for public

pages)

Twitter: The number of Followers of the author

SENTIMENTSentiment that is associated with an article/post. As default, a generic

sentiment analysis is being calculated for each result based on our own

sentiment analysis. All articles/posts are then attributed a positive, neutral or

negative sentiment.

TOPIC A topic contains the keywords and phrases you wish to search for within

posts and articles, in the form of search queries. The first topic is usually

your brand and subsequent topics are typically competitor brands.

Alvise De Nardi

Account manager for IT, ES and LATAM

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: +352 203 335 3924

mailto:[email protected]

Sports

Sentiment Analysis: Tottenham vs Manchester City