The World Cup of Crisps is an unofficial national competition that takes place every four years on the social media network Twitter to determine the United Kingdom's favourite brand and flavour of potato chip. The competition was created, organised and hosted by TV host Richard Osman, and the inaugural competition took place in February and March 2012.
Contents
History
The World Cup of Crisps was originally conceived on social media by Osman in January 2012, and took place following a break in filming of Osman's TV gameshow Pointless. The inaugural edition had 32 types of crisp, with eight group winners qualifying for the quarter-finals, and the competition progressing further using a knockout system. Votes were cast on Twitter using the hashtag '#wcocr'. The second edition was expanded to include 48 types of crisp and three group stages before semi-finals and a final, and votes were cast using Twitter's new poll feature.
World Cup of Crisps 2012
Due to the lack of Twitter polls, no official numbers of votes were revealed in the first edition of the World Cup of Crisps.
Group Stages
Entries in bold denote crisps that qualified for the knockout stages.
World Cup of Crisps 2016
The second edition began on Saturday 26 March and is set to conclude on Monday 28 March. The new Twitter poll feature automatically tallied the results, and during the semi-finals over one million votes had been cast.
First Group Stage
The 48 crisps were drawn into twelve groups of eight, with the top two from each group progressing to the second group stage. Bold indicates crisps that qualified.
Second Group Stage
The 24 remaining crisps were then re-drawn into six groups of four, with the top two qualifying for a third group stage. Bold indicates crisps that qualified.
Quarter-Final Stage
The 12 remaining crisps were then drawn into four groups of three, with just the group winners progressing to the semi-finals. Bold indicates crisps that proceeded.
Charity
A number of bookmakers started taking bets on the inaugural World Cup of Crisps, and during the second edition, Betfair decided they would donate all losing bets to the Child's i Foundation. By the end of the tournament, they had managed to donate £7,500 worth of losing bets to the charity.
Controversy
During and after the second edition of the event, several voters became disillusioned with the choice of crisps on offer. A debate began to emerge on the definition of crisp, with three of the four semi-finalists, Wotsits, Monster Munch and Quavers, as well as the 2012 winners Frazzles, being criticised for not actually conforming to the definition of crisp. These opinions were shut down by Osman, who urged critics to 'organise [their] own World Cup.'