Super Bowl XLVI breaks online streaming record, claims NBC

by Steven Williamson on 8 February 2012, 10:15

Tags: NBC

The New York Giants 21-17 win over the New England Patriots on Sunday was watched by 111.3 million viewers worldwide with 2.1 million people streaming the event online, claims broadcaster NBC.

The Super Bowl XLVI event was streamed officially via NBCSports.com and NFL.com for the first time and has become the “most-watched single-game sports event ever online,” as well as the most-watched television event in US TV history, says NBC.

The live streaming didn't go without a hitch though as many users reported that the footage shown wasn’t live but lagged up to 10-15 minutes behind the action of the pitch, while some complained that the picture quality was poor and not "HD-quality" as the channel had promised.

Facebook saw an upsurge in posts as American football fans discussed the match, while Twitter generated more than 12,000 tweets per second during the last three minutes of the game.

NBC didn’t confirm whether the data included users streaming the game over Verizon, who was the exclusive mobile phone partner of this year’s Super Bowl event.