The Atomic Blog

After the defeat of the New England Patriots on Super Bowl Sunday, we are left to wonder: How many people were left cursing at the TV and how many were ecstatic?

Of the 13.7 million tweets that were broadcasted over the 5 hours of the game, we took a look at what was being said about the Patriots and the Giants during the past 14 days (Jan 23 - Feb 7) to get a taste of how tweets were buzzing before, during, and after the big game. Here’s what we found:

New England Patriots

When looking at social buzz by geography across states, we noticed a large number of tweets came from California, Florida, and Texas despite being far from teams’ home states of New York and Massachusetts. We wondered why far away states were so participatory; one insight was that Patriots fans tend to travel or move away from their home states, yet maintain a loyalty to where they once lived. This is everything from born and raised locals to those who attended one of the many colleges in the Boston area and caught a case of Pats fever. In the case of Florida, it is also helped along by the old stereotype of New England / East Coast transplants rooting for (or against) the Pats.

Beyond the qualitative assessment, states like CA, TX, and FL have very high populations. The three states account for the 1st, 2nd, and 4th most populous states respectively. This will heavily skew the share of voice to those states on a national level, and with the Super Bowl representing such a wide cross section of the US it’s not too surprising to see the social buzz density closely mirror population density across the country.

A staggering 45% of tweets mentioning the Patriots are positive despite their loss, outpacing the positive sentiment of the NY Giants by six percentage points. Why the better sentiment despite their loss? It’s due to a number of factors, everything from people congratulating the Pats after a tough loss to those venting anger toward the NY Giants and thus skewing their sentiment more negative. Also, with the Giants as underdogs in Super Bowl XLVI (just like the last Giants/Pats matchup in XLII), positive predictions in the Pats favor ahead of the game helped to push their score higher.

New York Giants

Where the Pats geographical buzz density was more evenly distributed, the Giants saw a notably higher concentration coming from New York vs. other areas in the US. Combined with the Giants’ lower sentiment score this tells us a few things.

First, the Pats have been one of the dominant teams in the league for over a decade, where the Giants were an underdog this year, just as they were the last time these two teams met in the Super Bowl. Add to this the Giants stopping the Pats in Super Bowl XLII and it’s clear that NY state saw a severe case of Giants fever erupting on social channels this year as fans hoped for - and received - another victory against New England.

Second, where the Pats enjoyed a more even buzz distribution and more positive sentiment nationwide, the Giants clearly showed a hometown team. Everything from casual observers expecting a Pats victory to jaded San Franciscans who watched the 49ers lose to the rival Giants in overtime (…ahem…) made the Giants a less favorable team, however at home they clearly had a fanatical and loyal base of fans cheering them on.

Buzz Volume

Over our 14-day sample period, the Giants buzz was larger in volume compared to the Patriots by quite a large margin considering the sample size. With a ten point spread in buzz volume and the huge skew to NY state in terms of geographical distribution, the hometown fans were leading the charge with a vengeance, however the sentiment skew shows that at a national level the Pats were the more positively viewed team. Overall, the buzz surrounding the Giants outpaced New England throughout the sample period, just as the Giants would ultimately outpace New England in the game.

This post was co-authored by Sean Mulholland and Melanie Wong of Atomic Digital.