Rugby World Cup Final Prompts Text Message Frenzy

More than 75 million person to person text messages were sent on the day of the Rugby World Cup final last month, as sports fans celebrated England’s historic victory over Australia, according to the latest figures.

The Mobile Data Association claims that the importance of text messaging was reaffirmed by excitement of the match, which saw Jonny Wilkinson kick that dramatic extra-time drop goal to secure England’s victory by 20 points to 17.

According to the MDA: “Whilst England and Australia battled it out on the pitch supporters around the world used text messaging to keep up-to-date with the score as well as with promotions being run by sports organisations, content providers and network operators.”

The figure puts the Rugby World Cup Final 2003 at the top of the UK sporting text-count for 2002 and 2003. High-profile sporting events often encourage frantic texting and 65 million SMS messages were sent on the last day of the Premiership, while 58 million were sent on the day of England’s World Cup victory against Argentina.

The total number of person to person text messages sent across the UK’s four GSM networks during October surpassed all previous records to reach 1.8 billion, according to the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association (see Text Messages Reach Record Total During October).

Mobile Data Association: 01922 419600 www.mda-mobiledata.org

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