The super Tweets of #SB47

Monday, 4 February 2013

The game is over, the confetti has descended, and #RavensNation is celebrating their big victory. During the Sunday matchup between the @ravens and @49ers, the roar of the crowd was comprised of 24.1 million Tweets about the game and halftime show (this leaves aside the ads, about which more below). By the beginning of the second half, the volume of Tweets had already surpassed last year’s Tweet total.

The moments generating the biggest peaks of Twitter conversation (measured in Tweets per minute, or TPM) during the game:

  • Power outage: 231,500 TPM
  • 108-yard kickoff return for Ravens TD by Jones: 185,000 TPM
  • Clock expires; Ravens win: 183,000 TPM
  • Jones catches 56 yard pass for Ravens TD (end of 2nd quarter): 168,000 TPM
  • Gore TD for 49ers: 131,000 TPM

Tonight’s most mentioned players were (in order): Ray Lewis (@Raylewis), Joe Flacco (@teamflacco), Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) and Jacoby Jones.

Whether they were inside the stadium or glued to screens elsewhere, athletes and commentators tweeted out their thoughts during the game’s big moments.

The other superstar on the field tonight was @Beyonce. Her halftime performance lit up Twitter (did it affect the Superdome power grid, we wonder?), generating 5.5 million Tweets. Fans’ favorites reflected by Tweet volume:

  • Conclusion of her show: 268,000 TPM
  • Destiny’s Child reunion on stage: 257,500 TPM
  • Singing ‘Single Ladies’: 252,500 TPM 

A few Tweets that flew about @Beyonce’s energetic performance:

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Super Bowl without conversation-starting ads — some planned, and others that emerged in real time. Of the national broadcast ads that aired during the game, approximately half had a hashtag included in them, up from one in five last year.

The biggest surprise of the game was the 33:55 power outage that halted the Superdome action. And during that hiatus, Twitter was most definitely on. Several parody accounts (e.g. @superbowllights) popped up to provide some comedic relief as anticipation built.

Additionally, the half-hour-plus downtime gave brands on Twitter a chance to showcase humor, creativity… and abs.

Illustrating just how fast advertisers moved in: it took just four minutes for the first Promoted Tweet to appear against searches for [power outage] on Twitter. We’ll have more stats about the ads that ran during #sb47, including the results of our #AdScrimmage, later this week on the Twitter Advertising Blog.

Meanwhile, over at the #PuppyBowl, where fans were heartily rooting heartily for Butterscotch or Copper, there were about 500,000 Tweets — including a perhaps unsurprising uptick during the Big Game’s power outage.

Posted by Omid Ashtari (@omid)
Head of Sports & Entertainment