50% of All Tweets About Television Relate to Sports Events

Twitter has fast become the go-to social platform for those looking to engage online while watching television. But one genre of television seems to engage Twitter users far more than any other.

According to data recently released from Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings, a remarkable 50% of all tweets about TV in North America—that’s nearly 500 million tweets in the US alone—were about sporting events in 2013. Further, sports events also comprised 12 of the top 20 most-tweeted-about TV broadcasts last year.

A new Nielsen SocialGuide study analyzed Twitter conversation about the top 10 sports events and found that people who saw tweets about each event viewed an average of 32 Tweets about that event. That compares with an average of only 25 tweets for the top special events airings and just nine tweets for the top new series episodes.

“This high level of engagement around sports events is significant as teams, programmers and advertisers look to reach and amplify messaging to audiences across screens,” Nielsen suggests.

 

Graphic: Nielsen