#superbowl

By
Wednesday, 9 February 2011

A record 162.9 million people watched this year’s Super Bowl, making it the most-watched television event ever.

The big event had its own Twitter record, too. If you tweeted at 10:07:16pm EST, you helped set a new Twitter record: during the final moments of the game, fans sent 4,064 Tweets per second (TPS) – the highest TPS for any sporting event. That spike shattered the previous record in the sporting world: the 3,283 TPS sent during Japan’s 3-1 victory over Denmark during last summer’s World Cup. In fact, Twitter users shattered that record six times over the course of the game – including early touchdowns by the Packers and Steelers and throughout the halftime show. (Still, all of this Super Bowl tweeting wasn’t enough to top the all-time record of 6,939 TPS, set just after midnight in Japan on New Year’s eve.)

#superbowlThe surprise winner of the Super Bowl? Usher (@UsherRaymondIV). His sudden appearance during the Black Eyed Peas’ (@bep) halftime show performance created the second largest peak in Tweets during the game. Plus, the continued talk about him made him the most talked about person during the Super Bowl. The Peas were next on the list of most-discussed people, followed by Slash, Eminem, and Christina Aguilera. Aaron Rodgers, the most mentioned player, was sixth.

So which commercials and brands were people talking about most during the game? Doritos, whose “Pug Attack” commercial was a popular favorite, was this year’s champion. Audi and Pepsi took a close second and third, followed by Chevy, Coca-Cola and Groupon.