SAS software won’t be able to predict the Super Bowl winner this Sunday but the analytics capabilities of the technology can offer a lot of insight about the thoughts of each team’s fans.

Cary-based SAS has put its analytics software to work on social media text to find trends and patterns and some of what it found is surprising. Among the findings:

  • With more than 80 percent of quarterback Tweets, the Denver Broncos’ Peyton Manning tops his Seattle Seahawks counterpart Russell Wilson in the volume of Tweets in the days leading up to Sunday’s big game.
  • Measured by team, the 64.4 percent of Tweets mentioning the Seahawks beats the 35.6 percent of Broncos mentions.
  • Analyzing social media by location, Broncos fans dominate in the Great Plains states and likewise Seattle dominates the Pacific Northwest. But Seattle also has a strong fan base outside the Northwest and West Virginia surprisingly has a strong and measurable fan base.

The analysis was done by Dan Zaratsian, a text analytics expert and a SAS consultant. Zaratsian will be applying SAS Text Analytics to tweets during Sunday’s game. SAS will post results on Monday.