2010 NHL Winter Classic Bona Fide Tradition On Ice and iPhones Alike

On January 1, 2010, the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers took the ice for the third annual NHL Winter Classic. By the time Marco Sturm scored the OT gamewinner and brought much of the crowd of 38, 122 to their feet, it was clear the game had cemented itself as more than three periods of hockey and that the first day of the year was no longer just for college football and sleeping off hangovers.

While the teams and location changes each year, the 2010 Classic solidified for the NHL, a VaynerMedia client, a place as a New Year’s tradition. Not only for the people lucky enough to experience the memorable game live at Fenway (over 300,000 people applied for the chance to buy tickets) but also by the unprecedented online chatter generated before, during, and after the game.

NBC host Bob Costas, who has covered a variety of sporting events from the World Series to the Olympic Games, said in a pre-Winter Classic media conference call of the general atmosphere surrounding the game, “The buzz for it is like nothing I’ve seen.”

NHL Social recognized that there was already significant excitement around the game and decided to capitalize on the early interest  by launching a 50-day countdown on @NHL Twitter, posting a message each day with the number of days remaining until the big game to drive excitement and conversation. The countdown tweets were frequently retweeted and also led to fans picking up the torch and using the hashtag #NHLWinterClassic for a variety of tweets about the game, the other goal of the campaign:

By the time the Winter Classic rolled around, the #NHLWinterClassic hashtag had been used around 4,000 times. On the day of the game, Winter Classic-related conversation exploded, to the tune of nearly a quarter-million tweets using a combination of the NHL-created hashtag, #winterclassic, “the winter classic,” “winter classic,” Flyers, Bruins and other Classic related terms.

The hashtag #winterclassic was a top trending topic from 2:00 ET until just after 6:00 ET, well after the game had ended, with a brief drop off of the trending topics list around 3:30 ET. The 2009 Classic between the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks, for comparison, only inspired a trending topic through one period of the game.

The instant, inside access to the game provided by “live tweeting” from both the NHL and the fans appear to be a major driving factor behind fans engaging with the game through social media tools like Facebook and Twitter.

Twitpics posted to the @NHL Twitter and Facebook from the various pregame activities, such as the pre-game pressers with the Dropkick Murphys and co., and the game itself led to almost 40,000 hits by the night of January 1, and most of the individual pictures averaged over 1,200 hits each. Twitpics from the 2009 Classic averaged a few hundred hits each on average, demonstrating the boost in fans looking to connect with the game online and a reflection on the increased presence of NHL social media.

On Facebook, the excitement around the game continued long after the final goal was scored. The photo album from the Winter Classic, posted on January 5, drove  4,123 hits the first day it was live and over 5,000 total within four days. The first day of traffic was the biggest concentration of media consumption on the NHL Facebook page to date.

Fans have continued to post and share pictures from the 2010 game and reflect on their thoughts and experiences, and have also continued to use both the #WinterClassic and #NHLWinterClassic hashtags, through today, three weeks after the game.

While next year’s game will be in a new, as-yet-undisclosed location, one thing is for sure: the fans will be waiting, armed and ready with laptops, iPhones and Blackberries ready to tweet, post and TwitPic  the 2011 Winter Classic.