The Facebook Euro 2012 final showdown will be played by Germany and England. The real final of the 14th UEFA European Championship in Poland and Ukraine will probably be different, but on Facebook Die Nationalmannschaft (German national football team) and England Football Team deliver a fierce battle [Real Time Stats].

Recently, we showed all known Facebook pages of this year’s Euro 2012. Obviously, the German Football Federation (DFB) and the English Football Association (FA) recognized the importance of Facebook and the direct effect to their fans. The social media activities are operated with a high detail orientation. Therefore, we have two really great examples of successful Facebook sports pages.

Facebook Euro 2012 – Final Showdown

England is currently the number one, but it’s very close. Looking at the past few months, we see that England was behind Germany a long time and suddenly overtook them.

People Talking About The German And English Football Team

But there’s not only the fan count on Facebook, also very important is the question: How many people are talking about the two teams?

The People Talking About This (PTAT) chart shows quite a different view than the simple fan count. Germany is clearly leading for people talking about this since the beginning of this year, of course, except some weeks back in March. The gray line marks the start of the 14th Euro on 8th June, 2012. And at this point – Boom! – Germany’s PTAT number is really skyrocketing, while England’s PTAT number increases only slightly. The same happens with the People Talking About This – Rate for the last 30 days. We can easily see, that since the beginning of the Euro 2012 many more people are talking about the national German football team.

Facebook Interaction Numbers Of Team England And Germany

Here we can see a chart of the interaction rate, which shows nearly the same as PTAT – most of the time Germany is in front of England. However, we can identify three exceptionally high peaks in the German chart. First was on 19th January with an interaction rate of 0.8668 %.

The reason for this first peak was basically a simple New Year’s post (see the image). The message was apparently well received.

The second peak is resulted from a wall post only a few days back, namely the 7th of June. This posting is pinned to the top, therefore the like, comment and share numbers will still be growing.

The last and so far highest peak with an interaction rate of 1.0203 %, was during the game Germany vs. The Netherlands on Wednesday, 13th June with nearly 5k shares, 42k likes and 1280 comments.

Of course, the Facebook interaction of the English team page had also several peaks. The posting with the highest peak so far, with an interaction rate of 0.3139 %, is also only a few days back, specifically on the 2nd of June. So, just shortly before this year’s Euro started. This wall post was pinned to the top for some days and points to England season ticket competition by The FA.

In summary, England is leading in pure fan count, but if we are talking about actual interactions and fan engagement, in our opinion the more important metrics for effective Facebook marketing, Germany is clearly ahead of England.

But hey, the Euro 2012 just started – let’s see what else will happen.