Major: BET Awards 14 Land Highest Cable Ratings & Outperform World Cup, Golden Globes & More [Details]

Say what you will about the annual BET Awards but the network has much to celebrate after an amazing show this past Sunday which by many accounts was their best in years. Not only did they have social media in a frenzy after a night full of buzz worthy moments from Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown, Pharrell Williams and hilarious host Chris Rock, but now word comes that they nabbed some of the highest ratings on TV this year so far. According to reports from TVBythenumbers:

The live premiere of the “BET Awards”14 on Sunday, June 29, is cable’s #1 award show this season, drawing 7.9 million viewers and dominating Twitter with 11 million tweets. Up one million tweets from last year, this year’s show is the most tweeted about “BET Awards” ever; outperforming the “Billboard Music Awards,” “Golden Globes,” “ People’s Choice Awards,” “Game 5 of the NBA Finals” and the “World Cup USA vs. Portugal.”

The live telecast of “BET Awards” 14 was a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, trending in the United States for the entirety of the show. The high energy show generated the highest tweets per unique author of any special since October 2012 (Nielsen; News/Live).* The BET Awards pre-show red carpet telecast garnered 508,000 tweets. Tweet volume surpassed all other red carpets shows year to date combined, including the GRAMMY Awards and the Academy Awards.

BET.com set traffic records across all key metrics for day of show traffic with unique visitors up 49%, page views up 32% and a 171% increase on video views from last year. BET.com is also on track to set records for day after show traffic. Additional highlights include:

BET Facebook page reached 15 million unique users generating 50.5 million impressions
BET Awards Facebook page reached 7.3 million unique users creating an additional 25.8 million impressions
240K Instagram posts tagged with the hashtag #BETAwards
BET Awards Tumblr page had over 40k notes and reblogs – total followers increased 35% in the last week
BET.com experienced the highest level of traffic in connection with the premiere of the awards