‘The Beautiful Game’ has been a beautiful subject for number-crunchers this summer, with many record-setting statistics coming out of the World Cup tournament in Brazil.

The 32-team tournament already has the second-best average attendance in World Cup history, FIFA says. And it’s not over yet. With an average crowd of 52,762 after 60 matches, Brazil 2014 has eclipsed the 52,491 average attendance mark for the 2006 tournament in Germany. Only the 1994 tournament in the United States had better attendance numbers, with an average of 68,991 fans in the crowd for 52 matches in nine cities during the 24-team tournament.

FIFA estimates the 2014 numbers will continue to climb, with total attendance projected to approach 3.4 million after the final four games of the tournament. It’s not enough to eclipse the nearly 3.6 million total attendance record in set 1994, but this year’s World Cup is setting records of its own online.

For instance, never before has a soccer ball had 3 million Twitter followers. The World Cup’s official soccer ball, “Brazuca,” has its own Twitter account (@brazuca), and more Twitter fans than Martha Stewart, Donald Trump or Chris Rock.

 

‘The Beautiful Game’ also boasts the top athlete on Twitter, with Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo’s 27.8 million followers placing him 14th overall on the list of most-followed accounts. That’s 3 million more followers than Oprah Winfrey, and 6 million more than Kim Kardashian can lay claim to. The most popular non-soccer athlete on Twitter is LeBron James with 13.4 million followers – less than half Ronaldo’s total.

 

The World Cup is also shattering Facebook records. Facebook reported 1 billion World Cup interactions by June 30 – far more than the social media giant has ever seen from a sporting event, including past Super Bowls.

Brazil’s shootout victory over Chile on June 28 was a high point for both social media giants, and provided a wealth of interesting data. Facebook reported 31 million users generating 75 million interactions during the game – a shootout victory for the host Brazilians.

Twitter tracked traffic second-by-second during the shootout, and was able to easily pinpoint the moments when players made their shots. Twitter traffic fell nearly silent during each kick, then exploded with reaction moments later.

Twitter shootout traffic

But some of the most amusing numbers came from the gambling world. A Norwegian man reportedly won $2,700 for correctly wagering that Uruguay’s Luis Suarez would bite someone, according to a Swedish gambling company. Suraez infamously bit Italian player Giorgio Chiellini on June 24, and more than 150 European gamblers cashed in, the gambling site said.

FIFA fined Suarez a cool $119,000 for the incident.

Luis Suarez