Close Coverage: Talisman’s Top Four Super Bowl LIX Narratives

With 127.7 million viewers, Super Bowl LIX wasn’t just the biggest sporting event of the year—it probably drew the biggest American audience since the Apollo 11 moon landing. So, who made the most of their time in the spotlight? We used Talisman, our data platform, to track the four biggest narratives to emerge around the big game in a sampling of U.S. online discourse. 

The top two, football and commercials, were unsurprising—though the uptick in coverage of commercials in the weeks before the game does suggest companies made defensible decisions to release their ads ahead of time. We’ll focus on the latter half of Talisman’s Super Bowl Top 4.

3: The Kendrick Controversy

Kendrick Lamar’s controversial halftime performance received a lot of online attention, despite comparatively little in the weeks leading up to the game. Given the lopsided affair on the field, Lamar’s halftime show certainly rivaled the Eagles defense for breakout performance of the day. 

4: The Swift Factor

A fan with no official part in the game was the 4th-biggest topic. There to support Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift was booed by haters who were gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Although Eagles fans have a history of booing international superstars, we all know Swift could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at her. But at the end of the day, we’re guessing there’s no lingering bad blood for Philly’s hometown girl. 

Our new FilterLabs brief, Disrupting the China-Russia Axis, is coming soon! In the meantime, you can also check out some of our previous insight reports and recent newsletters and the latest episode of our podcast, Navigating Noise: Why You’ll Never Find The Perfect News Source (And Why That’s Ok), with Erol Yayboke.

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