La Copa del Rey 2021 (King’s Basketball Cup) is an annual knockout basketball competition organised by Spain’s professional league, Liga ACB. This year, spectators could not attend the games in person due to COVID-19, but they still supported their favourite teams by posting motivating messages to a live social media wall, which was displayed courtside.
Since fans could not attend the cup in person, the live social media wall replaced their cheering. Spectators viewed the game on TV and posted comments, cheers and words of encouragement on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtags #CopaACB.
Their messages then showed up on three social media walls displayed on a 32-meter screen installed courtside.
Players and coaches could watch the messages of support roll in during the games; an attempt to make up for the lack of a real-life audience in the seats.
Below, you can see how the large social wall was situated instead of an audience.
“We’ve put three social media walls up on a 32-meter screen. For this, we have used three computers, each with a separate wall with different sources,” says Jose Noriega from Last Lap, the agency behind the Copa del Rey campaign.
Why have only one social wall when you can have three? Last Lap had big plans in mind when they set up the social walls. They added three social media walls with different sources to one giant screen.
Wall 1 displayed content tagged with the hashtags #CopaACB from Twitter, and #Jasikevicius from Instagram. Wall 2 had #CopaACB from Twitter and Instagram, and Wall 3 #RMBaloncesto from Instagram.
Different walls for different sources
One good reason to display more than one social wall on one screen is to separate content tagged with different hashtags. Case Western Reserve University, for instance, has a two-storey multimedia wall at the heart of the campus that serves as a communication hub and features the university’s social media walls.
CWRU combines two social walls with different sources to keep the community informed and connected to all that is happening on campus and in the greater Cleveland area. Similarly, Copa del Rey’s social walls have different sources to accommodate the fans’ incoming content.
Copa del Rey gave fans special seats during the games. The screen with three social media walls was placed right in front of the basketball court to make viewers part of the game. In turn, viewers were excited to appear on the big screens, and this excitement encouraged them to submit social media content.
A social wall brings all the cheers, comments and fan support to one place, opening a channel between teams and fans.