England would have reached the World Cup semi-finals in Brazil and the tournament would have been won by Mexico if the competition was based on social media audiences, according to programmatic advertising experts, RadiumOne UK.

Mexico and Brazil were the big winners in the Social Score in terms of volume. Despite Mexico leaving the tournament to two late goals in the Second Round and Brazil collapsing in the semi-finals, both teams added over two million followers during the tournament.

This equates to a 25% for Mexico and a 34% for Brazil. However, it was Mexico’s initial audience, going into the tournament of over eight million fans, which saw the team maintain their place at the top of the table.

Following a disappointing campaign on the pitch, the England team saw the smallest increase of all teams at the tournament – just 11 percent. However, this did equate to over half a million new fans and leaves England as the team with the third largest fanbase, demonstrating the FA is still using its social platforms to good effect engage with its audience

Eventual winners Germany maintain its place in fourth position and saw its audience increase by over a third (34%). Runners-up Argentina gave a very strong showing in its Social Score too, seeing an increase of 81%.

Six teams saw their audiences increase by over 100% – The Netherlands, Algeria, Russia, Ivory Coast, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Cameroon

The heroics of Tim Howard and Clint Dempsey captured the hearts and minds of the American public, as the US team gathered almost a million new fans throughout the tournament. The team now has more fans on social than footballing establishments France and Italy.

Rupert Staines, MD Europe, at RadiumOne comments: “The top four teams (Mexico, Brazil, England and Germany) are fully aware that their connected audiences are everywhere and have done a sterling job in engaging with them throughout the tournament.

“Even though these teams all had huge fanbases before a ball was kicked, they were sure not to rest on their laurels and kept a steady flow of interaction with them throughout.

“Even the teams that had relatively tiny followings before the tournament have seen massive boosts, demonstrating the opportunity for sports and rights holders to engage with new audiences as part of their wider commercial strategies.”

Take our partnership with the FA for example.  They truly understand and action the commercial value from their 18m strong digital audience through RadiumOne’s platform tools.”

The results of the tournament after the final, based on RadiumOne’s Social Score analysis would be as follows:

The Social Score methodology* devised by RadiumOne UK is based on a team’s total audience across leading global social networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram & Google+. The Social Score shows the relative reach of each nation’s football team and reflects the potential audience that it can unlock for sponsors and commercial partners. Each team’s Social Score was first calculated on 11^th June 2014 (the day before the tournament began) and recalculated on 14^th July 2014 (the day after the final) to see which teams had seen the biggest spikes in new fans