PHOENIX—Nielsen is reporting that Sunday’s Super Bowl scored a record overnight rating of 49.7, up 4 percent over last year’s game, according to the Associated Press. The number represents the percentage of the 116 million U.S. TV households that tuned into the Patriots’ 28-24 upending of Seattle’s lead during most of the game. Total number of viewers was not yet available.
The Super Bowl continues to be the biggest event on U.S. television, with more Americans simultaneously watching and consuming processed food than for any other live broadcast. The big game is regularly the most-watched program in United States, with last year’s game setting the bar at 111.5 million people, and bookies putting 3/2 odds that this year’s audience would exceed 113 million.
Here are some other Super Bowl XLIX-related numbers:
PRODUCTION
18 TV trucks
11 office trailers
1 Avid edit facility inside the University of Phoenix stadium
33 miles of cable
45 Sony HDC-2500 cameras with Canon glass
2 Sony HDC-3300 HD Super Motion cameras with Canon glass
4 Grass Valley LDX-86 XtremeSpeed cameras with Canon glass
5 I-Movix 4K cameras with Fuji Cinematic lenses
1 Steadicam
1 Cablecam
19 EVS XT3 servers
2 EVS Spot Boxes
100 Microphones
Multiple Evertz DreamCatchers
FACILITY
312 Ephesus LED lighting fixtures (SportsTechie.net)
228 Indoor distributed antenna system locations, connected by…
150,000 feet of cable to accommodate…
4 TB of data usage (Digg)
STREAMING
11 hours of streaming through the Microsoft Azure platform to promote its TV Everywhere platform.
1.3 million simultaneous online viewers during Malcom Butler’s interception. (Slate)
160,000 Akamai edge servers supporting the NBC Sports streaming service. (Akamai’s blog)
DRONES
0 drones, if the Federal Aviation Administration appeal universally was obeyed. (The Verge)
TERMINOLOGY
Multiple (likely) illegal uses of the term, “Super Bowl.” (Ars Technica)
ECONOMICS
$11,565.14 on average, for one of 100 Super Bowl tickets listed on the secondary market as of Friday evening. (Forbes)
$4.5 million for a 30-second spot, up from $4 million last year.
$360 million is NBC expected take from..
70-plus advertisers. (Los Angeles Times)
120 million is the audience total necessary for those advertisers to beat last year’s price of $3 per viewer. (Forbes)
$14.3 million in Super Bowl-related consumer spending. (Statista)
$62 million in box office receipts for “American Sniper’s” sixth weekend, a record for a Super Bowl weekend. (Wells Fargo)
SOCIAL
28.4 million tweets, up from 24.9 million last year
65 million people posted...
265 million Super Bowl-related comments, links and posts on Facebook
ETC.
1 Satellite TV purveyor Dish twisted its AutoHop commercial-skipping function to skip the game rather than the ads. (LA Times)
2 dancing sharks, one of which had no rhythm. (The Independent)
Top 5 Super Bowl ads by a fan vote on Hulu:
- Budweiser’s “Lost Dog”
- Snickers’ “Brady Bunch”
- Clash of the Clans’ “Revenge”
- Fiat’s “Pill”
- Toyota’s “My Bold Dad”
2 (at least) programmatic ads purchased on WICU-TV in Erie, Pa., for the Oreos and Ritz brands.
See…
January 27, 2015
“NBC Resets With New Tech for Super Bowl XLIX”
NBC will deploy a new slate of production trucks, 4K cameras and graphics technology designed to showcase the sport’s biggest moment of the year.
January 31, 2015
‘The Economist’ Predicts the End of Football
January 30, 2015
“Oculus Super Bowl Party Could Be the Future of Social Sports Broadcasting” (Venture Beat)
