So far, Twitter users have generated over 1 billion tweets pertaining to gaming from January 1 to October 31 of this year, but that still hasn't been enough to outweigh the number of tweets produced by the BTS Army. The gaming community has had its biggest year yet on Twitter, thanks to the release of new consoles and anticipated titles, but even the hype surrounding the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 couldn't generate a larger discussion than BTS's fanbase.
This has been a year of ups and downs, but gaming as a whole has had a pretty solid year. With the launch of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, hit titles such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons releasing, and everyone being forced to stay inside for weeks, it's no wonder that the conversation around gaming has seen a drastic increase. Comparing Twitter analytics from 2019 to 2020, discussions surrounding console are up 100 percent for the Xbox Series X and 200 percent for the PlayStation 5 in both the USA and Canada. But these impressive numbers are not enough to defeat the BTS Army.
According to Head of Twitter Sports Canada Conor Clarance, BTS is bigger than gaming in terms of conversation volume. In an interview with Screen Rant, Clarance stated, "The BTS and K-Pop community are about half the size of hockey [in Canada]. They are around a third of the size of gaming. It's a really interesting side of the conversation because, globally, BTS is actually bigger than gaming. I'm pretty sure they're pretty close, but obviously, they are pretty sizeable discussions." Clarance went on to explain that, while BTS is not as big as gaming in Canada, they have larger fanbases in other countries. "BTS is not as big in Canada, but gaming is pretty representative of the larger global landscape. Whereas, BTS takes hold in other countries."
When Clarance discusses how big either gaming or BTS are, he is not talking about the number of people tweeting about them. Instead, Twitter's analytics focus on conversation volume. This means that there could be more gamers who use Twitter than there are BTS fans, but the BTS community generates a larger number of tweets. As Clarance stated, that isn't the case for every country in the world. Canada may not support BTS as much as the United States, but the BTS Army tweets more about BTS and K-Pop on a global scale.
If the BTS Army's objective is to take over the world, well, they're at least beating gamers on Twitter. Regardless, 1 billion tweets is a lot of time spent typing out messages that are 280 characters in length. Both BTS fans and the gaming community have surpassed 1 billion tweets on their favorite subjects, making them both rather impressive fanbases. Of course, not all of these tweets are in favor of either community that they are mentioning, but they all go towards inflating that topic's conversation volume on Twitter.