SOASTA, the leader in cloud and mobile testing, today announced the results of its Super Bowl Second Screen survey, which shows that 41% of smartphone and tablet owners plan on using mobile apps while watching this year’s Super Bowl. Of smartphone/tablet owners,56% of millennial women (ages 18-34) said they expected to use apps to multi-task on their smartphones and tablets while watching the big game, while men 18-34 (15%) and women 55-64 (6%) are more likely to use dating apps like Tinder and OK Cupid. In fact, 2 percent of all married Americans plan to use dating apps during the Big Game.
SOASTA commissioned the Super Bowl Second Screen Study to raise awareness around the peak traffic and high download rates expected during the U.S.’s most watched sporting event of the year. This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of SOASTA in January 2014among 2,035 adults aged 18 and older, among whom 1,289 are smartphone/tablet owners.
Of the 41% of American smartphone and tablet owners who are expected to use apps while watching this year’s Super Bowl broadcast, 27% said they would use social media apps like Facebook and Twitter, followed by games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush (18%), and weather (16%) apps. Additional app categories that are expected to be widely used while watching this year’s Super Bowl include:
- Sports (15%)
- News (13%)
- Video (12%)
- Food delivery (6%)
- Gambling (5%)
- Fantasy Football (5%)
- Dating (4%)
“The second screen experience is gaining traction every year with big sporting events,” said Tom Lounibos, CEO of SOASTA. “Richard Sherman’s outburst in the NFC championship garnered 2.2 million tweets in the 10 hours after the game. Fans are relying more and more on their smartphones and tablets, not just TV, to experience these events. As users turn to their smartphones and apps during commercials and breaks, developers need to make sure that their apps can handle the thousands of concurrent users logging in, ensuring their apps are ready for prime time.”
A majority (53%) of smartphone and tablet users who plan on watching the Super Bowl felt that there would be some critical uses for devices to follow the Super Bowl. Thirty-one percent said that using social media apps and websites would be the most critical use of a smartphone or tablet, followed by following the game (22%)as well as tracking game and player statistics (17%). Other smartphone and tablet uses that were deemed critical for Sunday’s matchup include:
- Ordering food (12%)
- Games (e.g. Angry Birds, Candy Crush) (11%)
- Checking work email (11%)
- Visiting team websites (10%)
- Tracking fantasy football (7%)
About Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of SOASTA from January 14-16, 2014 among 2,035 adults ages 18 and older, among whom 1,289 are smartphone/tablet owners. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, contact Trafton Kenney at (415) 442-4027 or Trafton.kenney@grayling.com.
About SOASTA
SOASTA is the leader in cloud testing. Its web and mobile test automation and monitoring solutions, CloudTest, TouchTest and mPulse, enable developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test and monitor users with unprecedented speed, scale, precision and visibility. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and analyzes real user behavior in real-time to deliver actionable intelligence, faster. With SOASTA, companies have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, delivering quality user experiences every time. SOASTA’s customers are many of today’s most successful brands including Avaya, American Girl, Bonobos, Backcountry.com, Chegg, Experian, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit http://www.soasta.com.
SOASTA is a registered trademark of SOASTA, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.
