The Super Bowl halftime show is officially the biggest concert of the year, Nielsen announced in a press release. The halftime show is the biggest concert of the year, and for Super Bowl 50, British rock group Coldplay is set to perform on the biggest stage in sports and music with a special guest appearance by the Queen Bey herself, Beyonce Knowles.
In a new study based on the halftime shows from the past five years, Nielsen found that there is a direct impact in an artist's musical career after they've performed during halftime, even though they aren't paid for their appearances. In order to measure the exact impact, Nielsen performed an analysis on album sales and track equivalent album sales (TEA) (in which 10 digital track downloads equal one album) and also took streaming equivalent albums (SEA) into account (in which 1,500 streams equal one album) for the two weeks prior to each Super Bowl for the past five years. The numbers were then averaged to create a baseline to compare pre-and post-Super Bowl sales.
Legendary rock band The Who saw a 179 percent increase in sales after their 2010 performance, hip hop group The Black Eyed Peas saw a 103 percent increase after their performance in 2011, pop icon Madonna saw the biggest increase with 591 percent increase after her 2012 performance, and R&B and pop queen Beyoncé had a 196 percent increase after her 2013 performance. Pop crooner Bruno Mars enjoyed a 352 percent jump after his 2014 performance, and pop star Katy Perry gained a 211 percent increase after her halftime show performance last year.
Nielsen has already gathered pre-halftime show information for Coldplay, and the band's activity to date (ATD) in terms of total album sales is 23.2 million units. The group's most recent album, "A Head Full of Dreams," has sold 437,000 ATD since its Dec. 4, 2015 release, which included album sales, TEA and SEA for the week ending on Jan. 21, 2016, according to the press release. Nielsen cannot provide a prediction for how Coldplay's halftime performance will affect its album sales, but the company believes it will be a "significant" increase.
