Even casual football fans who tune in to the Super Bowl just for the commercials have to admit that Sunday night’s game was one of the most exciting in recent memory. Between that game-winning interception and Missy Elliott’s comeback halftime performance, not to mention the incredibly sad ads, social media was abuzz all night long.
Not surprisingly, fans turned to Twitter to discuss every minute of the game, with Patriots cornerback Malcom Butler’s interception the most tweeted about moment with 395,000 tweets per minute. More than 28.4 million Super Bowl-related tweets were sent during the broadcast, up slightly from the 24.9 million sent during last year’s game.
Marshawn Lynch was the most mentioned Seahawk on Twitter. Lynch is considered a force of nature, so Seahawks fans were shocked when he didn’t get the carry when the Hawks were so close to the end zone in their final drive. Instead, Butler intercepted a pass and the game ended in a Patriots win. Four-time Super Bowl champ Tom Brady was the most tweeted-about Patriot.
That was the worst play call I’ve seen in the history of football.?
— Emmitt Smith (@EmmittSmith22)
February 2, 2015The halftime show sparked more than 3 million tweets over 15 minutes, with Missy Elliott and a pair of dancing sharks stealing the spotlight from Katy Perry. Elliott’s been out of the game for the last few years, so her guest performance with Katy Perry and Lenny Kravitz gave her old songs a boost. Spotify said Elliott’s streams skyrocketed by 676 percent, with “Lose Control” and “Get Ur Freak On” topping the list. Meanwhile, Perry saw a modest bump of 85 percent after her explosive (literally) performance.
Elliott also bounced back up the iTunes charts with eight songs in the top 200 and three in the top 10 on Monday afternoon.
Facebook’s real-time play
According to Variety, more than 65 million people took to Facebook to discuss the game, up from 50 million last year. The network saw more than 265 million likes, posts, and comments. Facebook was actively campaigning to take eyeballs away from Twitter with its own Super Bowl experience, and it did see more activity: 1.36 million people per minute were dissecting the Patriots victory as the game ended. But Twitter took recently aim at Facebook’s video efforts with its own new video tool. Videos were huge during the Super Bowl: The NFL used the network’s promoted video tool for brands to post in-tweet, real-time game highlights.
“Pass is INTERCEPTED!!!”Brady loses it.Sherman loses it.Twitter breaks in two.One of craziest finishes EVER.
https://t.co/GazYbK6Lsz
— NFL (@nfl)
February 2, 2015The battle may be over, but the war for social media supremacy rages on.
This story was corrected to differentiate between Twitter’s video tool for users and its brand videos.