SUPER BOWL SUPER ONLINE, TOO

It seems like a tailgate party by comparison, but the 2,105,441 “unique users” who accessed NBCSports’ live stream of the Super Bowl represented the biggest online audience for a sports event ever, according to data released Tuesday by Omniture and mDialog. That number may have amounted to only 1.89 percent of the total U.S. audience of 111.3 million that set a new record for the most-watched television program in history, but it gave NBC Universal, which has not had much to boast about recently, a moment of exultation. In a statement, Kevin Monaghan, who heads NBC Sports’s digital media unit, said that the results “exceeded our expectations in every way.” He noted that the coverage was to provide fans with a “second screen” experience, “and we delivered on that promise with unprecedented robust coverage.” In particular, the study noted that viewers of the digital stream were heavy users of a feature that allowed them to look at plays from different angles. The game could be watched via the NBCSports and NFL websites.