SAO PAULO, June 29 — Brazil’s victory over Chile in an agonising penalty shootout that sent the hosts into the World Cup quarter-finals was more frantically tweeted than the Super Bowl, the social media company said today.

Traffic reached a record pace of 388,985 tweets per minute during the game, beating the 381,605 messages per minute fired during this year’s NFL final, Twitter Inc said in a statement.

The peak came when Chile missed their last penalty, propelling Brazil into the quarter-finals.

A total of 16.4 million tweets were sent during the match, surpassing the 12.2 million sent for the opening game in which Brazil beat Croatia 3-1. 

In absolute numbers the Super Bowl was, however a bigger event, with more than 24.9 million tweets.

People like to use social media to comment on what they watch on TV, making global sports events like the World Cup enormous business opportunities for companies like Twitter.

Brazil is one of Twitter’s top global markets. — Reuters