Super Bowl Spike: 12,233 Tweets Per Second Is 300% Above Last Year's Game

Super Bowl Spike: 12,233 Tweets Per Second Is 300% Above Last Year’s Game

Feb 6, 2012 at 1:57am ET by Matt McGee

The New York Giants, New England Patriots and Super Bowl XLVI have dethroned Tim Tebow as the sports king of Twitter.

Sunday night’s Super Bowl set a new sports-related record with 12,233 tweets per second (TPS) as the game ended on a failed “Hail Mary” pass that secured a 21-17 Giants’ win over the Patriots.

That’s more than triple the 4,064 TPS level of last year’s Super Bowl.

Here’s the official @twitter record announcement from Sunday night:

The highest Tweets per second #SuperBowl peak came at the end of the game: 12,233. 2nd highest was during Madonna’s performance: 10,245.

— Twitter (@twitter) February 6, 2012

Earlier, @twitter also posted that the last three minutes of the Super Bowl had an average of 10,000 TPS.

Both of those numbers are higher than the previous sports record, which was set just about a month ago when Tim Tebow led the Denver Broncos to an overtime playoff win and a then-record 9,420 TPS.

This year’s Super Bowl, then, becomes one of the busiest moments in Twitter history, and the highest activity ever seen for a sporting even. As best we can tell, these are the top five sports-related TPS moments:

Super Bowl XLVI (February 5, 2012): 12,233 tweets per second
Tim Tebow playoff win (January 8, 2012): 9,420 TPS
FIFA Women’s World Cup (July 17, 2011): 7,196 TPS
Copa America (July 17, 2011): 7,166 TPS
UEFA Champions League Final (May 28, 2011): 6,303 TPS

Expect all of those to be shattered in the coming year. If this year’s Super Bowl is any guide, with its 300 percent spike over last year’s game, future sports events should also set new records as we go through the year.

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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