No matter who you are rooting for this weekend, it is amazing how the voice of fans can impact the course of a season. Bing has been a partner of our hometown team – the Seattle Seahawks – for four years, and has witnessed the power of dedicated fans firsthand. Seattle fans are infamous for being the loudest in the country, but we also discovered that they support the team in plenty of other ways.
We looked at Bing data on millions of searches over the past season, combined it with social data from Twitter, and a picture emerged of a strong fan base, growing in volume and passion throughout the season. To celebrate all die-hard football fans – no matter who you root for – we created a video highlighting some of the most striking Seahawk fan stats throughout the season.
We saw steady search volume from die-hard fans throughout the season, with smaller spikes related to pivotal games. Then when the Seahawks clinched home field advantage for the NFC Divisional playoffs, we saw an upward trend, indicating that more fans across the country were interested in how the Seahawks were performing.
When the Seahawks hosted and beat the New Orleans Saints, we saw a massive spike, with that week’s search volume jumping 400% higher than the regular season average. The interest continued to grow, with an additional 150% increase over the previous week’s high, when the Seahawks beat their divisional rival, the San Francisco 49ers to secure the NFC Championship.
Individual player performances also spurred big spikes in searches. For instance, Marshawn Lynch’s drive against the Saints led to 14 times more searches than his weekly average (and caused seismic action due to fan cheers, his second career ‘BeastQuake’.) And speaking of search spikes, Richard Sherman garnered a 1000% increase in searches following his game-winning play and intense on-field interview during the divisional championship. It’s clear that interest in the team has surged as they’ve pushed further into the post-season, so now the only question is whether they can complete their search for the championship.
Most of us will be watching to see what the outcome will be. Bing can also help you plan your party, so head over to www.bing.com/football to see all the ways Bing can help you tackle your plans for the big game.
May the best team win!
– The Bing Team
