The Capital One Orange Bowl on New Year’s Eve, which featured Clemson-Oklahoma in a CFP semifinal, had the best Twitter TV ranking of all bowls heading into last night’s CFP National Championship, with 6.5 million people seeing one or more of the 487,000 tweets sent about the game, according to data from Nielsen Social. The Clemson-Oklahoma late afternoon game led the Twitter TV rankings despite having a smaller TV audience than the other CFP semifinal later in evening, which saw Alabama-Michigan State in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl. The Stanford-Iowa Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day also ranked ahead of the Cotton Bowl. The Rose Bowl had 6.4 million people seeing 315,000 tweets about the game. Among non-New Year’s Six games, the Jan. 2 Valero Alamo Bowl, featuring TCU’s 31-point comeback against Oregon, was the highest ranked, coming in at No. 4 overall. The earliest bowl to crack the list of 20 was the Royal Purple Las Vegas Bowl on Dec. 19, which was on the opening weekend of bowls. That game ranked No. 13 overall with 2.6 million people seeing 85,000 tweets.
|
TOP 20 MOST-SOCIAL BOWLS FOR '15-16 (EXCLUDING CFP CHAMPIONSHIP)
|
|
RK
|
NET
|
BOWL
|
MATCHUP
|
DATE
|
UNIQUE
AUDIENCE (000)
|
TWEETS
(000)
|
|
1
|
ESPN
|
Orange
(CFP semi)
|
Clemson-Oklahoma
|
12/31/15
|
6,480
|
487
|
|
2
|
ESPN
|
Rose
|
Stanford-Iowa
|
1/1/16
|
6,442
|
315
|
|
3
|
ESPN
|
Cotton
(CFP semi)
|
Alabama-Michigan State
|
12/31/15
|
5,777
|
464
|
|
4
|
ESPN
|
Alamo
|
TCU-Oregon
|
1/2/16
|
5,742
|
420
|
|
5
|
ESPN
|
Fiesta
|
Ohio State-Notre Dame
|
1/1/16
|
5,337
|
331
|
|
6
|
ABC
|
Citrus
|
Michigan-Florida
|
1/1/16
|
3,645
|
146
|
|
7
|
ESPN
|
Peach
|
Houston-FSU
|
12/31/15
|
3,307
|
156
|
|
8
|
ESPN
|
TaxSlayer
|
Georgia-Penn State
|
1/2/16
|
3,187
|
88
|
|
9
|
ESPN
|
Sugar
|
Ole Miss-Oklahoma State
|
1/1/16
|
3,143
|
103
|
|
10
|
ESPN2
|
Outback
|
Tennessee-Northwestern
|
1/1/16
|
2,991
|
98
|
|
11
|
ESPN
|
Texas
|
LSU-Texas Tech
|
12/29/15
|
2,818
|
114
|
|
12
|
ABC
|
Pinstripe
|
Duke-Indiana
|
12/26/15
|
2,593
|
44
|
|
13
|
ABC
|
Las Vegas
|
Utah-BYU
|
12/19/15
|
2,564
|
85
|
|
14
|
ESPN
|
Russell Athletic
|
Baylor-North Carolina
|
12/29/15
|
2,524
|
70
|
|
15
|
ESPN
|
Birmingham
|
Auburn-Memphis
|
12/30/15
|
2,371
|
51
|
|
16
|
ESPN
|
Liberty
|
Arkansas-Kansas State
|
1/2/16
|
2,370
|
51
|
|
17
|
ESPN
|
Independence
|
Virginia Tech-Tulsa
|
12/26/15
|
2,261
|
40
|
|
18
|
ESPN
|
Military
|
Navy-Pitt
|
12/28/15
|
2,106
|
26
|
|
19
|
ESPN
|
Music City
|
Louisville-Texas A&M
|
12/30/15
|
2,067
|
64
|
|
20
|
CBS
|
Sun
|
Washington State-Miami
|
12/26/15
|
2,054
|
50
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
NOTES: * = Games on ABC, ESPN nets also aired on ESPN Deportes. The CFP semifinals also had additional Megcacast coverage on ESPN2. Nielsen Social measures tweets in the U.S. from three hours before through three hours after airing, local time. Twitter TV Audience is measured from when the tweets are sent until the end of the broadcast day at 5:00am ET. For multicast events, networks are listed alphabetically and metrics reflect the highest unique audience across all airing networks.
