Royal Wedding – 2018

On May 19th, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were married in the Royal Wedding of 2018. The world was fascinated and viewership numbers in the US have been higher than expected, and higher than prior royal weddings, based on publicized Nielsen data:

Prince Charles & Diana (1981): 17 Million

Prince Charles & Camilla Parker Bowles (2005): 3.6 Million

Prince William & Kate Middleton (2011) : 23 Million

Prince Harry & Meghan Markle (2018): 29 Million

YouTube reported over 11 Million people watching the Royal Wedding with peak viewership of 1.3 Million watching concurrently.

Royal Wedding Search Activity on Google

Leading up to the Royal Wedding, the US was searching for Meghan Markle and the start of the Royal Wedding to plan around. Meghan Markle searches doubled “royal wedding” searches. This dwarfed another big event on the day, The Preakness.

In the UK, Meghan Markle outpaced the FA Cup Final 5M to 1M. In comparison, the UK has a population of just over 65M vs. the US of 326M!

No surprise to see the countries with the most interest (proportion) of activity have royal ties.

Interest in the US was fairly high across all states but DC & Vermont captured the highest interest. Utah, Nevada, and Hawaii had the lowest. Kind of tough to watch in Hawaii with the time difference!

Additional comparisons in the US over the last 30 days for Google include the NFL Draft and The Preakness. The Royal Wedding surpassed both. The NFL Draft did come close, albeit with very different audiences. Twitter indicates that 65% of the audience talking about the Royal Wedding was female. The NFL Draft appears more popular in middle America.

Royal Wedding on Twitter

Trendsmap indicates over 6.9 Million tweets mentioning the #royalwedding from Friday to Sunday, across the globe.

Countries with the highest proportion of tweets included Kenya, UK, Nigeria, and Australia. The US was #19 on the list by proportion but #1 in count.

Winners by overall volume were the US and UK as #1 and #2. London, Bangkok, and New York City rounded out the top 3 cities by volume of tweets. Lagos in Nigeria was #4.

In the US, DC led the conversation proportion. States with the highest activity were mostly states on Eastern Time but Wyoming is a surprise.

Similar to Google, discussion on Twitter focused mostly on Meghan Markle. The obsession is real! Harry doesn’t even show up in the top 10.

Volume peaked on the wedding day, Saturday, with over 5M tweets.

Most re-tweeted with over 88K:

One day you’re 15 and posing outside Buckingham palace and 22 years later you’re marrying the Prince. Unreal. #RoyalWedding pic.twitter.com/XCQvJAEXNw — Lucy Sempey (@LucySempey) May 19, 2018

Tweet volume died down shortly after the live wedding ceremony was over. At the peak of the ceremony tweets reached almost 28k/minute. Activity started to trail off after 7:40am EST.

It’s over for now. Who knows how many years until the next Royal Wedding!? Have you watched La Casa de Papel / Money Heist on Netflix yet? Read a recent post on the phenomenon.

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