At around 11:18 am (EAT), October 12, 2019, Eliud Kipchoge took the world by storm after running 42KM in under two hours. Prior to this record-breaking moment, the INEOS 159 Challenge had gained traction around the world with millions awaiting to witness a moment that has been likened to the moon landing.

PS: There was even a game made to emulate the marathon.

Locally in Kenya, companies like Safaricom had gone out of their way to support the Kenyan marathoner with a dedicated Eliud159 Emoji in collaboration with Twitter, free YouTube for Kenyans to watch the historic moment and the company even temporarily rebranded M-PESA to E-LIUD in honour of the living legend.

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While the whole world was cheering on Eliud Kipchoge, a lot of data was being produced online, especially Twitter and YouTube to be specific.

The Trends

On Twitter, a number of hashtags were trending in association with the event. The hashtags, #Eliud159, #Kipchoge159 and #NoHumanIsLimited garnered over 11 Billion impressions from over 200,000 tweets as of October 12, 2019, at 4 PM (EAT).

The conversations created around these hashtags were 46% positive remarks and 3% negative. Out of these tweets, the most influential tweets came from the following accounts:

• Eliud Kipchoge
• Safaricom PLC
• Man City
• IAAF
• Droid
• Rio Ferdinand
• BBC Sport
• BBC Africa

In terms of viewership, thanks to Safaricom’s free YouTube offer for the day, over 3 Million Safaricom subscribers redeemed the offer through the *159# USSD code.

Now to the most interesting statistic, 88% of viewers watched the event through their PCs or laptops, 70% caught the event on Android phones and 57% were on iOS devices.

[infogram id=”kipchoge-trends-1h8j4xllm81k4mv” prefix=”fHx”]

Yes, we do realize that the percentage adds up to more than 100% but that’s because some users were watching from multiple devices.

As the curtains close on the INEOS 159 challenge, the conversation around the event and the man, Eliud Kipchoge himself keeps generating billions of impressions. The question we have to you now is, how did you watch Kipchoge make history?

Featured Image Courtesy: INEOS 159