Super Bowl 50 Hits Social
After Denver Broncos upset the hotly fancied Carolina Panthers to win the Super Bowl, Cutting Edge Sport curators LiveWire Sport take a look at how the event was covered on social media.
Each year the worlds of sport, entertainment, advertising and Americana huddle together to take part in the Super Bowl.
The winners and losers aren’t limited to those on the field, but also those who made the big plays off it – with social media increasingly the playground for brands to do battle on.
In 2015, an average of 114.4m viewers watched NBC’s broadcast of the contest between New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks – making it then the most watched US broadcast ever – while Twitter and Facebook both reported record levels of Super Bowl conversation.
With that at stake, how did the different platforms, as well as brands and teams, make a play for the spotlight as the Super Bowl celebrated the big 5-0 – and what can we learn from the online conversation around this year’s game?
.@StephenCurry30 gets things started! #SB50 #KeepPounding pic.twitter.com/VxPq2mmzRF
— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) February 7, 2016
Twitter encouraged fans to Tweet their support at this year’s season finale with custom emojis for the hashtags #SB50, #Broncos and #KeepPounding. #SB50 was used in 6.9m Tweets over the past seven days, a 135% increase on the same period for #SB49 last year.
It’s here!#KeepPounding. #Broncos.#SB50 starts right NOW! pic.twitter.com/nVsmIAZji6
— NFL (@NFL) February 7, 2016
The Carolina Panthers fans won the hashtag battle of the teams over seven days, with 1.06m total mentions of #KeepPounding to 962K for #Broncos. But in the game window of an hour either side of kick off and full-time it was a different story: the victorious Broncos drowning out Panthers by 508K Tweets to 373K.
Brands are also able to get hold of their own custom emoji, with Coca-Cola the first to do so back in September 2015 with the #ShareACoke campaign. Verizon, Pepsi and Budweiser all joined the emoji action in the buildup to Super Bowl 50 – with Budweiser pledging $1 for every use of the #GiveADamn hashtag.
Telling your friends not to drive drunk can be awkward. Let Helen Mirren do it for you. #GiveADamn and make a plan.https://t.co/oqqCO20uW8
— Budweiser (@Budweiser) February 7, 2016
Twitter Moments – the curation feature making its first Super Bowl appearance – provided reaction to the night’s biggest moments: whether that was the half-time show, potential breaking news of Marshawn Lynch’s retirement, or updates from the on-field action.
While Pepsi extended their sponsorship of the half-time show by using a Promoted Moment to give Twitter users an exclusive look behind the scenes.
With the incentive for users to win $250k, Esurance comes out of #SB50 as the winner of the battle of the brands. More than 2m Tweets mentioned the insurance company on Twitter, according to data from Spredfast.
Win the #EsuranceSweepstakes and maybe your next backyard party could look like #PepsiHalftime
— Esurance (@esurance) February 8, 2016
Seeking to engage the estimated 650m sports fans on the site, Facebook made a play for Twitter’s grip on the real-time market with the launch of its new Sports Stadium in time for the NFL Championship games – moving away from an algorithmic timeline to provide live updates and stats about the game to users from their friends and experts.
Coldplay scored the most-liked Facebook post mentioning the Super Bowl after their half-time performance, while Denver Broncos’ victory dab has racked up more than 221K shares so far.
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#SB50 #PepsiHalftime
Posted by Coldplay on Sunday, 7 February 2016
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We #BeatThePanthers!!!! We won the #SuperBowl!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Denver Broncos on Sunday, 7 February 2016
Of course Super Bowl is always a star-studded affair – whether that’s David Beckham on his way to the game, or Von Miller joining elite company as #SB50 MVP.
In time for this year’s event, Instagram extended advertiser video length to 60 seconds to tie in with the millions of dollars spent on coveted TV spots. T-Mobile were one of the first to get involved – with a little help from Drake.
And Cam Newton wasn’t the only one making his Super Bowl debut last night.
Snapchat has partnered with the NFL throughout the season to run its Live Stories from games and throw users right into the middle of the action – with sponsors including Skittles and Warner Bros’ Batman v Superman.
The sharing platform missed out at last year’s Super Bowl, not running a Live Story after failing to sell sponsorship to a sole sponsor. This year it doubled down, with a US Story opening with Barack Obama throwing the football at the White House, and a global Story for fans around the world to get involved in.
Brands and celebrities also looked to Snapchat to reach new audiences. Lady Gaga joined the platform in time for her appearance at the Levi’s Stadium, while brands including Gatorade and 20th Century Fox purchased special Snapchat lenses for users to share with friends.
Check out @Gatorade‘s Super Bowl Sunday #Snapchat ad with Serena Williams: https://t.co/mzr82h0GEe pic.twitter.com/fNRAvScQyI
— Adweek (@Adweek) February 7, 2016
Later this week we will take a deeper dive into the numbers, using Spredfast data to find out more about the #SB50 conversation on social media.
What content resonated with you around this year’s Super Bowl? Let us know at @SportIndustry and @LiveWireSport!
