Social Media Coverage of the 2013 MLB All-Star Game
The 2013 Major League Baseball All-Star Game took place on Tuesday night, from Citi Field in New York. There was no shortage of interest in the mid-summer classic this year. And the effects that the game had on social media reflect just that. Twitter exploded with MLB-related tweets, especially during Mariano Rivera’s perfect 8th inning. Oh, and not to mention, Twitter was responsible for a fan running on the field during the game.
The 2013 MLB All-Star Game, which drew an 8.1 Nielsen rating on Fox, (the highest on that network since the American Idol Finale), produced an astounding 851,192 comments on Twitter, from 477,795 unique users. This is a 5% increase over last year’s All-Star Game in Kansas City. Twenty-nine different MLB-related topics trended worldwide during the All-Star game, with #ASG being the most widely used hashtag. It appeared in more than 17% of social media comments during the game.
Mariano Rivera
The segment of the game which produced the most social media activity was Mariano Rivera’s relief appearance in the bottom of the 8th inning. An estimate shows that Mariano’s appearance drew 109,000 tweets, and peaks at 14,000 tweets a minute. Rivera is widely considered the greatest closer of all-time, and plans on retiring at the end of the season; making this his last appearance in an All-Star Game. Mariano Rivera would go on to win the game’s MVP award.
Just as they did last year, Major League Baseball set up social media concierge rooms. Here, players could use social media after leaving the game. Jose Bautista, Robinson Cano, Matt Harvey, Max Scherzer, Aroldis Chapman, Patrick Corbin, Michael Cuddyer, Yu Darvish, Jose Fernandez, Freddie Freeman, Adam Jones, Matt Moore, Chris Sale and Mike Trout were amongst players who shared content via the @MLB account.
One fan even decided to use social media as a means to join the players on the field. Clad in a Robinson Cano t-shirt, Dylan Masone tweeted that he would run onto the field if he got a thousand retweets. Can you guess what happened next? Masone got over 3,000 retweets, and proceeded to storm the field, stopping behind second base just before getting rock-bottomed by security.