Saturday afternoon might have been the first time since the start of the competition where all eyes weren’t actually on the World Cup.

The third place play-off shatters some of the illusion: up until that point almost every match mattered to some degree but a battle for the minor placings between two heartbroken teams isn’t the massive draw most World Cup games have provided.

And so when AS Roma played a friendly game against lower league Italian side Latina, they became the first Italian club to stream a full game on Twitter and found a large audience in the process.

The preseason friendly was watched by 100,000 on the social media platform via the club’s Italian-language account which has a reach of 1.65m – and could be promoted on the popular English-Language account to prommote to even more fans.

According to the club’s official website, the stream accumulated a total viewing time of “just over one year and 224 days.”

#ASRoma become the first Serie A club to broadcast an entire match live on Twitter… ????

➡️ https://t.co/BZgYVovPMg pic.twitter.com/nXTmejoouw

— AS Roma English (@ASRomaEN) July 14, 2018

“We’re delighted to become the first Serie A club to broadcast a full match live on Twitter,” Guido Fienga, Roma’s chief operations officer told the ASRoma.com.

“When we set up Roma Studio back in 2014, our goal was to be able to control how we delivered the most compelling content to our supporters around the world and today’s live Twitter broadcast is another first for our media department.”

“We’ve made a great effort in recent years to embrace new technology and platforms with our TV channel, radio station and social media and this season we’ll continue to innovate in a way that brings our fans closer to the club.”

The stream shows once again Roma’s commitment to being innovative on social media and using digital technologies. Two summers ago, the Italian club streamed their match against Russian side Terek Grozny on Facebook, and in the intervening period have been partnering with a host of new platforms to bring their fans the best experiences on social media.

Over the next few weeks, there’ll be a gap for football fans to fill between the end of the World Cup and the start of the new season – there might be time for more social media firsts between now and then.