The Super Bowl may be the biggest sporting event in the U.S., but around the world American football doesn’t hold a candle to soccer’s … err, football’s … popularity.

That was proved true on Twitter yesterday when the Champions League semifinal between Barcelona and Chelsea set a new tweets-per-second (TPS) record for a sporting event.

Twitter announced that 13,684 TPS were hitting its platform during the match, breaking the Super Bowl’s record of 12,233 TPS set in February.

As Twitter becomes more mainstream — you can hardly watch a TV show of any kind in the U.S. today without seeing Twitter hashtags on the screen — I’d expect future sporting events to surpass yesterday’s Champions League record.

By the way, the overall record-holder for TPS is still a Japanese broadcast of Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, which produced 25,088 tweets per second back on December 9, 2011.

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Statistics: Social Media | Twitter: Statistics

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Marketing Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the US. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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