Awards show enjoyed biggest audience participation

·         Fans and viewers of the show massively dominated social media

·         More than 2,500 tweets per minute during Best Grime Act announcement

London, 4 November 2014: The 2014 MOBO Awards made a massive splash online receiving the most engagement from their audience in recorded history with #MOBOAwards2014 trending at number one in the UK. On the night, the hashtag trended nationally and held its number one spot for a further 24 hours.

The MOBO Awards were a huge success on social media. As part of the MOBO mission to bring fans closer to the music they love, the organisation made the revolutionary move to hold voting for MOBO Best Album via Twitter live with the official voting hashtags driving an 800% increase in Twitter traffic during the show.

As a result, MOBO received more than 133,000 mentions from fans and artists alike.  The MOBOAwards2014 hashtag peaked at more than 3,000 tweets a minute and trended above major sporting events including the globally watched football match between Liverpool and Real Madrid.

In the UK alone, tweets reached more than 1.3 million individuals during the live show. The equivalent of more than one in 10 viewers (12%) tweeted about the event, demonstrating the passion and engagement of MOBO fans.

One demonstration of the MOBO Organisation’s uniquely close link to underground music came with Stormzy winning Best Grime Award in association with BBC Radio 1Xtra. This moment sent social media into overdrive with Stormzy seeing close to 2,000 retweets and 1,500 favourites on his thank you tweet within the just a few minutes.

So far there have also been nearly one million views on the official MOBO YouTube channel, with Jesse J and Kid Ink’s opening performance viewed nearly 200,000 times already.

This increased exposure was translated through to success in the charts. MOBO success has long been a catalyst for artists’ careers – with Best Newcomer winners going on to achieve 33 number ones to date – and this year’s category in association with HTC One (M8) appears to have been no exception.

Sam Smith, winner of as many as four awards, saw MOBO Best Single Stay With Me move up eight places. Jessie J, who won MOBO Best Female, saw her song Bang Bang move back up in the charts.

Kanya King said: “We wanted the awards to be the biggest, boldest and best yet, and we achieved just that. The overwhelming support from the fans in the arena, at home and online is testament to people’s incredible passion for the music they love. Knowing how many people we reached makes it especially pleasing to have used this platform not only to celebrate the achievements of living legends like Candi Staton but also shine a well-deserved spotlight on the next generation of talent. Nowhere else would the likes of Stormzy or Krept & Konan be exposed to so many people at prime time, and that’s something to celebrate.”

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About MOBO Organisation

The MOBO Organisation was established in 1996 by Kanya King MBE to recognise the outstanding achievements of artists in musical genres of black origin. It is now Europe’s leading urban music brand.

The MOBO Organisation has evolved into far more than just an awards show, supporting a huge variety of genres all year round as it pursues its mission to identify, inspire, motivate and educate the next generation of creative talent.