One of the most popular sporting events on the American calendar, the annual Super Bowl is an event that the whole country, and people from all over the world look forward to.

As well as a momentous sporting occasion, the event usually plays host to other revelations (some more appropriate than others!) including, more flesh than expected from performing celebrities, and brands premiering new adverts. Last year the half time slot was given to VW who launched their popular Star Wars campaign with great investment, but substantial results.

In a change of proceedings, this year’s Super Bowl organisers have announced this week that the event is set to truly embrace the social media revolution. Organisers have created a social media command centre that will be part of the winning team, and an integral element, essential to the running of the event.

Understanding the undeniable power that social media currently holds, the command centre will act as an information hub, manned by 20 people for 15 hours per day throughout the competition.  The hub will score highly with fans of the Super Bowl, answering the questions of the public and providing information about the event and monitoring the conversations of the 150,000 visitors to the Super Bowl and those in the surrounding area.

The main networks under the social media hub’s scrutiny will be Facebook and Twitter, the staff hired for the event will be keeping an eye on mentions, replying to queries and addressing the most immediate concerns of all visitors to the event. This will be so much more than previous methods that just saw a stream of updates on results of matches, though I hope this feature won’t be forgotten.

Unlike lots of businesses, and indeed sporting events, SuperBowl has recognised and addressed the need for social media adaption. Due to it being a prime arena for conversation in the public eye, it is important that the efforts are put in to using it successfully.

Hired by Super Bowl, digital firm Raidious, have been drafted to sit on the bench and man the hub for the event and their CEO Taulbee Jackson, said: “Social media is just how people interact now. We felt it was critical to have some horsepower behind that aspect of the Super Bowl here, versus what you might have seen from other Super Bowls.”

The social media hub is forging a path for the interaction of social media within sporting events and due to its importance within the American calender, other such sporting milestones are more than likely to follow suit. Not only does the social media element allow the big wigs to see the great things that are being said, but it can be an area for internal development, addressing the needs of the public as and when they express it, and making changes that are necessary to keep visitors happy, and with 150,000 of them, they have their work cut out!

Unique and directed tweets from the centre’s team will go to confused fans looking for car parking spaces, give advice on the city’s best attractions and have stand by emergency information if anything should go wrong.

It won’t be easy to monitor all the hundreds of thousands of Super Bowl mentions throughout the event, but Radious has addressed this issue by adopting advanced search tools and analytics, that will use exact keywords and phrases to find relevant updates.

According to Mashable, researchers from a nearby University will be analysing the systems strengths and weaknesses including the possibilities social media opens up for customer relations.

On a slightly smaller scale, it is definitely worth adopting your own hashtag for an event you are holding, or monitoring mentions of your name during it, so that nothing comes as a surprise to you. You can use social media, to help you to address the needs of those at your events and ensure that you are always prepared for comments from attendants.

With the SuperBowl adopting social media to this extent, it is only a matter of time before other sporting events follow suit. I would be interested to see the networks involvement in a little event coming up for 2012, the London Olympics, although you may not have heard of that…