The World Cup Is the Most Talked-About Event in Facebook History

The World Cup is not only netting record ratings on television—it’s breaking boundaries on social media too. The soccer tournament is now the most-discussed event ever on Facebook, having racked up more than 1 billion interactions from 220 million users between June 12 and June 29, according to Reuters. That puts the event ahead of this year’s Super Bowl, Winter Olympics and Academy Awards combined.

In support of the event, Facebook launched a dedicated Page that offers live updates of matches in progress and gathers photos and media reports from the World Cup. The company is in the midst of a battle with Twitter to become the destination where people discuss live TV events online. Twitter has its own World Cup portal and announced Friday that 300 million tweets related to the tourney had been posted since group play started. The figure is double the number of tweets sent during the 2012 Summer Olympics. By the time a World Cup champion is crowned on July 13, these social media companies will already be big winners thanks to the huge traffic the matches have driven to their sites.