And then there were ten … soon to be eight. Even as some of the big soccer powers (cough… Italy, USA, England, France.) have retreated to the locker rooms, viewers remain tuned in and are tweeting more than ever. In particular, social media-savvy footy fans are going crazy for Budweiser’s World Cup reality show, Bud United. Will Bud’s campaign launch its brand into social media stardom? The numbers don’t lie.

In case you missed it, “Bud United” is Budweiser’s bid to gain the respect of the world’s beer-drinking football fans with a truly social connection. It puts 32 contestants representing each participating country in the same house with lots of Budweiser beer to watch the games together. The winning country representative will present the”man of the match” trophy to their beloved team at the World Cup finals. All this is being religiously posted and commented on in the various Bud United social media channels, specifically YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

While the Bud United accounts aren’t new (they’ve been around since late May), they have seen a fresh surge in followers — over 600,000 new followers in the past week alone. To put that into perspective, Coca-Cola, last week’s top gainer, netted just 169,000.

To recap, here are the biggest social media following gainers of the week:

As the chart shows, not all the sponsors are performing as hot as Bud. Of course, as we noted in our last week’s number crunch, some of the smaller sponsors like South Africa’s MTN and China’s Yingli Solar aren’t making any strides to develop their social followings despite the incredible visibility that a World Cup sponsorship packs. Another interesting development is Visa, who we praised last week for their big jump in YouTube subscribers, but this week has sustained an overall loss of social followers. Despite the YouTube Visa Go Fans channel gaining about 300 more subscribers this past week (a relatively good amount for YouTube), it seems the Visa Facebook page has been virtually abandoned by the marketing department during the matches (maybe the marketing team is doing too much partying in Jo-burg) and fans are slowly leaving. Here’s the breakdown as of Sunday night:

Stay tuned for next week’s numbers as SMI’s World Cup sponsor social media audit continues.