More people were tweeting about Conor McGregor’s UFC 202 victory than about Liverpool’s 4-3 win at Arsenal, according to figures provided to SportsJOE by Twitter.
The heavyweight Premier League clash attracted 1.5m tweets, a significant number but well short of the 2m sent as McGregor won his rematch against Nate Diaz.
Some 38,000 tweets were sent at the moment the Irishman’s split-decision victory was confirmed, while the end of the fifth and third rounds respectively were the next biggest talking points on the social network.
By way of comparison – that’s 6,000 more than the minute Jamie Vardy broke Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Premier League goalscoring record last season, and more than all but three Premier League talking points from August to February last season.
REVENGE! @TheNotoriousMMA beats @NateDiaz209 by majority decision… What an incredible fight! 👏 #UFC202 https://t.co/PUBp2mVTaX
— UFC on TNT Sports (@ufcontnt) August 21, 2016
The United Kingdom was responsible for more tweets about UFC 202 than any country with the exception of the United States – no mean feat considering that Diaz v McGregor didn’t start until the early hours of the morning on these shores.
Ireland took fourth place – predictably punching above their weight considering the home interest – while Canada (third) and the Philippines (fifth) rounded out the top five.
The UFC is clearly huge on social media – its main account has more than 4.3m followers while McGregor has 2.2m on his own – more than treble Diaz’s total of 595,000 at the time of writing.
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