A MAPPING OF FACEBOOK DATA SHOWS WHICH NFL TEAM WINS THIS YEAR'S SUPER BOWL XLVII BASED ON POPULARITY

Drawing on millions NFL team page “likes,” Facebook reveals every county’s favorite Super Bowl team

Thirty-five million U.S. Facebook users have “liked” the page of at least one of the NFL’s 32 teams. Combine that with location data and you’ve got, as Facebook says, “one of the most comprehensive samples of sports fanship ever collected.”

Facebook used the data to determine which team was the most popular in every county in the country. Here’s how it looks, mapped:

Facebook Map of NFL Team Popularity By Geographic Location (Click Image To Enlarge)

Unsurprisingly, most counties devoted to given team are concentrated in that team’s region of the country. The fanbases of few teams, though, are apparently not as bound by geography. The Dallas Cowboys are often referred to “America’s team,” and the data do indicate that the team’s fanbase covers an impressively large area of the country, stretching from Virginia to California, and pro-Cowboy counties appear in nearly every region. The Pittsburgh Steelers fan footprint is also fairly large and dispersed. Tim Tebow’s New York Jets, meanwhile, are the most popular team in only one county on Long Island. 

Facebook went further in its analysis, removing teams from the mix as they were eliminated from Super Bowl contention, either when they failed to make the playoffs or lost a playoff game. You can check out each of the resulting maps here.

So who wins the Facebook likes-per-county Super Bowl? The San Franscisco 49ers defeat the Baltimore Ravens in a landslide:

Click Image To Enlarge

COMMENTARY:    Very interesting that America's Facebook users predict that the San Francisco 49ers will win Super Bowl XLVII.  However, Jimmy Fallon used a complete different way for predicting who will win this year's Super Bowl:  PUPPIES.

 

If you haven't already done so, please read my blog post dated January 31 2013 about this year's Super Bowl XLVII teams, the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens, and find out which team the pro football experts think will win the Super Bowl, and my own prediction.  

  Courtesy of an article dated February 1, 2013 appearing in MIT Technology Review