The Boston Marathon bombings were the most tweeted about event related to sports in 2013, according to data released by Twitter on Thursday.
From the moment the first tweet about the explosions was posted at 2:50 p.m. local time on April 15, and in the five days that followed, 27.8 million tweets referenced the finish line bombings that killed three people and injured more than 260 others, as well as the subsequent death of one of the perpetrators, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the capture of his brother, Dzhokhar.
Twenty-four minutes after the explosions went off that day, tweets about the bombings reached a peak at 44,000 per minute.
Last season's NBA Finals, in which the Miami Heat beat the San Antonio Spurs in seven games, drew 26.7 million tweets worldwide, with Game 7 responsible for 7.4 million tweets and a peak of 150,000 tweets a minute as the game clock hit zero.
Twitter said the Super Bowl was the third-most tweeted sporting event in 2013, with 24.1 million total tweets, but the highest number of tweets per minute had nothing to do with the game itself. The halftime show featuring Beyonce at one point generated 268,000 tweets per minute, while the power outage at one point during the 34-minute stoppage had 231,500 tweets per minute, almost 50,000 more per minute than when the clock expired and the Baltimore Ravens prevailed.
The World Series, which resulted in the Boston Red Sox winning their third title in a decade, came in fourth with 6.5 million total tweets, followed by the Champions League first all-German final in May between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund (more than 4.8 million total tweets).
Rounding out the top 10: the Final Four, the BCS title game, the Wimbledon men's final with Andy Murray winning it all, the Ashes cricket series and the Stanley Cup finals.
