Steven Gerrard Launches 1.5 Million SMS Messages with a Goal
There are many important things about that very first goal in a football match, while many sports fans would tell you that it brings both a playing advantage and a psychological boost for players, it also means a lot for fans. Close to 800,000 text messages were sent after the first goal that England managed to score.
During the England match against USA, Steven Gerrard’s goal not only came with a very important point for the team, but also the clamor and excitement of many fans. The fans were so excited that they simply had to share it with others through text messaging. To be precise, after that first goal, England’s mobile users sent a total of 1.5 million SMS messages.
Now if that was the standard rate at which people texted, it would not have been a big deal; but a careful study of texting patterns during the two hour duration of the match clearly shows that the mobile usage patterns was greatly affected by the events that were happening at the World Cup.
Other important points that saw peaked usage rates were the kick off, the first US goal and of course, the end of the match.
The data about mobile user’s SMS sending patterns (as well as calling usage rates) were documented, researched and published by billmonitor.com. This independent group (which is approved by Ofcom) provides a very useful service which helps people determine what kinds of plans they should sign up for and if they are getting the right value for the money they spend each month on phone bills.
These new types of data regarding mobile phone use will also prove to be useful in various studies of both social psychology and economics. In any case, the results show that the football World Cup is truly an influential game in the UK.
