The Super Bowl is often seen as an annual barometer for American attitudes and perceptions. From the teams’ respective popularities and personalities – Who is this year’s hero? Or more interestingly, who is the villain? – to which ads are memorable and which fall flat, to how we feel about the halftime show and the performers’ outfits, the Super Bowl and the subsequent reactions and conversations reveal a lot about America.
Now, for the first time, we can also look at how Americans engaged with the big game online. Thanks to Sandvine’s AI-powered application identification and classification product, AppLogic, we can now see not only how many people tuned in, but which streaming service people used to watch the game, which food delivery service they used to buy pregame food, and which app they used to place their bets.
Looking at a representative sample of online viewers from across the US, we can see the following:
DoorDash Won the Pregame Game
Food delivery service DoorDash was the most popular app for purchasing those pregame snacks.
Fubo for Football
Sports streaming application Fubo saw the largest increase in traffic volumes during the game, while apps without the game saw large drops in viewership.
FanDuel Outdueled DraftKings
Over 25% of all households used a betting application during the game, with sport betting app FanDuel squeaking out a win over DraftKings. 
And while some might be tempted to see the 17% decrease in viewership during the halftime show as a commentary on the performance, we also saw a 28% decrease in social media usage during halftime, so it just might be that people turned away from their screens for a few minutes and actually interacted with the people around them. Anything’s possible.
This data should prove interesting, not only to streaming services and food delivery apps, but also to the service providers that deliver these online experiences. As we’ve seen, live streaming events are driving new traffic peaks, and service providers need to be prepared to manage these traffic flows to ensure a consistent QoE for their customers.
If you’d like to see more data and insights like this, watch for the 2025 Global Internet Phenomena Report, coming next month. We’ll be exploring the ever-growing, ever-changing landscape of internet applications in depth, just as we’ve done for the past 10+ years.
If you’d like a sneak peek, meet with us at Mobile World Congress next month in Barcelona. Book your meeting here.
Topics: Quality of Experience, App QoE, App Quality of Experience
