Brandwatch Bulletin: Super Bowl LV in Numbers

The celebrities, the ads, and the celebrities in ads.

Last night’s Super Bowl had all the familiar elements of any other – a killer half-time show, big-budget ads, and, of course, the game itself. That said, there was plenty that was unfamiliar, mainly due to the pandemic.

So we thought we’d gather up all the stats we have and present Super Bowl LV in numbers.

Let’s get to it.

The fans

The game was attended by 25,000 fans at Tampa’s Raymond James stadium, which was operating at around a third of its usual capacity.

7,500 of those attendees were healthcare workers, most of whom were from the area.

30,000 fans were able to pay $100 to have a cardboard cut out of themselves placed in an empty seat in the stadium.

At home, 100 million people were expected to watch the game unfold (the actual ratings are not yet available).

The ads

Advertising around the Super Bowl doesn’t come cheap, even if TV sports ratings have been down in the US during the pandemic. The price of a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl LV was around $5.5m.

The brands that aired commercials during Super Bowl LV were mentioned, collectively, over 916,000 times on Twitter while the game was live.

Mountain Dew clinched the title of most-mentioned brand during the show. The brand offered viewers the chance to win $1m, and this interactive competition helped them sail past all other brands to claim the top spot.

But Mountain Dew didn’t just take first place in volume. Their ad also got the best reception, with 95.49% of its sentiment-categorized online conversation being positive.

Michelob Ultra was close on Mountain Dew’s tail, though. Of their ad’s sentiment-categorized mentions, 92.87% were positive – an incredibly strong showing.

Of course, mentions and sentiment analysis are just one part of the picture when it comes to measuring the success of these ads over time.

The half-time show

The 12-minute performance saw The Weeknd joined on stage by bandaged dancers, and he reportedly spent $7m of his own money on the show.

There were no special guests and CNN reported that “only members of his production joined him during the performance due to Covid-19 protocols.”

Thanks to this performance, The Weeknd generated over 534,000 mentions throughout the course of the game.

Celebrity cameos

Many of the big game’s ads feature celebrities to help ignite social conversations.

Unsurprisingly, The Weeknd was the top-mentioned celebrity of the night. But others were also able to generate tens of thousands of mentions thanks to their ad cameos.

Drake was mentioned over 67,000 times throughout the game, having featured in State Farm’s ad. In fact, at 7:20pm EST when the commercial aired, Drake featured in more than 5,700 mentions in that single minute.

Shaggy received over 5,100 mentions at 9:15pm EST due to his cameo in the Cheetos commercial, while Bruce Springsteen accumulated over 1,600 mentions at 9:42pm EST when he appeared in Jeep’s spot.

Some ads used a roster of stars but, while they received a fair amount of attention, the featured celebs were lost in the fray. This is a good example of how sometimes less is more. None of the ads with larger ensembles of celebrities outshined the ones with a single celeb that was just the right match for the brand.

Overall, the brands that had been there before did the best online. They showcased their knowledge of the stage and, more importantly, proved they know their audience.

Thanks for reading

That’s us for today. We’ll be back on. Friday, so if you’re not signed up for our bulletins already, head here.

Stay safe,

Brandwatch React Team

Update subscription preferences

Unsubscribe