Trend sign: Super Bowl was also Super Mobile

To this end, the NFL had concluded an exclusive deal with the telephone company Verizon, with which around a third of American smartphone users have a contract. Some users criticized the long delay in the broadcast, meaning that the mobile app with its additional functions could not really be used as a second screen during the live broadcast. On the other hand, it is important as a sign of the trend that event organizers not only understand and market online streaming but also mobile as an independent media genre when selling rights - this example should set a precedent.

Even though comparatively few American sports fans watched the game of the year on the small screen, smartphones were very much in use during the game, and in an advertising-relevant way: Google reported that 41 percent of all search queries during the game on the topics of the TV commercials were entered via mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). Compared to the week before the game, the number of searches for Super Bowl commercials increased by 200 percent on desktop PCs, by 970 percent on tablet PCs and by a whopping 2700 percent on smartphones. This confirms the trend towards multitasking with a small screen while watching a program on the big TV screen. The market research company Nielsen reported in a recently published study that this is already the case for 40 percent of tablet or smartphone users in the USA. Twitter's statistics also show that mobile devices are increasingly becoming a natural part of TV consumption: during the game, the TPS meter (tweets per second) rose to 12,233 tweets - a year ago it was a maximum of 4064 and in 2008 only 27 tweets (which is of course also a sign of the increasing spread of Twitter). cjw