Champions League breaks Twitter record

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Check out all the images from Chelsea's Champions League semifinal match against Barcelona.

Move over, Super Bowl. The Champions League is taking over Twitter.

Club soccer's marquee tournament has surpassed America's biggest sporting event, at least in the Twitterverse.

The social-media company said Wednesday that Tuesday's Champions League semi-final second-leg match between Barcelona and Chelsea broke the tweets-per-second record for a sporting event.

Twitter said activity during the game, a 2-2 draw that saw Chelsea progress to the final after winning the first leg in London 1-0, peaked at 13,684 messages per second. That beat out the previous record for a sporting event, the 12,233 tweets per second during the climax of February's Super Bowl between the NFL's New York Giants and New England Patriots, which saw New York win 21-17 after scoring a touchdown with less a minute remaining.

The Super Bowl saw a total 13.7 million tweets. A Twitter spokesman said the company did not calculate the total number of messages sent during Tuesday's soccer match.

Soccer has a good track record on Twitter. The end of the FIFA Women's World Cup final between Japan and the US on July 11 saw 7,196 tweets per second, a Twitter record at the time. Japan won the game on penalties.

The tweets-per-second metric reflects the rapid rise of Twitter use: During 2008's Super Bowl the rate peaked at 27, while the peak for 2011's game was 4,064.

Still, sports still have some way to go before setting the all-time record. That belongs to a Dec. 9 television broadcast of the movie "Castle in the Sky" in Japan, which saw a peak of 25,088 tweets a second.