The Broncos and Panthers squared up in Super Bowl 50 on February 7 in San Francisco. The Broncos won the game 24-10 in Peyton Manning’s last game of his career. The Super Bowl has been one of the most widely viewed program in television history since its debut in 1967. This year’s game had the third largest viewership in history, with 111.9 million people tuned in. (Source http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/media/super-bowl-50-ratings/)
But eyes weren’t only glued to the television on the night of February 7. Millions of viewers took to twitter to talk about the game, commercials and halftime show using the hashtag #SB50. The hashtag racked up 8.3 million mentions in the month of February alone. Tweets using the hashtag were mostly from male twitter users and mostly from the United States. Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom and Brazil were among the top five countries of the tweets’ origins. Within the United States, users in California contributed the most #SB50 tweets. That may or may not be a result of the game being played in one of the state’s most populous cities.
The word cloud from the hashtag include SB50 and both team names, Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers. Aside from words associated with the game itself, like halftime, picks, winning, and field, a few of the most used words were connected to the National Anthem, Pepsi Halftime Show and commercials. The Buzz Graph also includes words from the game such as pass, ball, and catch. The only three words with any connection, though, were Super Bowl, Broncos, and Panthers.
Surprisingly, the most retweeted tweet wasn’t about the game itself, but a photo from the Pepsi Halftime Show. The tweet below was posted on Coldplay’s twitter. It shows the crowd at Levi’s Stadium with rainbow colored posters that read, “believe in love,” a message supporting marriage equality.
#SB50 #PepsiHalftime https://t.co/rnbutevhgU
— Coldplay (@coldplay) February 8, 2016
The second most popular tweet was about Panthers quarterback Cam Newton. The tweet showed Newton’s reaction when Manning scored his last touchdown to seal the Broncos’ win.
Cam's reaction on the sideline after the last #Broncos touchdown…#SB50 https://t.co/8XQ1PkbrN7
— NFL (@NFL) February 8, 2016
I wrote about this hashtag also! Your analysis helped give me more insight on this particular subject so thank you!
Interesting analysis on this hashtag. I think the map shows that while the Super Bowl is strong in North America it is still making some noise on other continents.