It actually happened: SpongeBob SquarePants really made an appearance during the Super Bowl halftime show. Squidward introduced Travis Scott’s performance, but for many fans, that just wasn’t enough. Presumably, those left unsatisfied took to the internet to stream “Sweet Victory,” the iconic song from the “Band Geeks” episode that over a million people wanted to hear during the halftime performance. That’s what the numbers suggest, anyway: Following the big game, streaming numbers for “Sweet Victory” jumped by 566 percent.
On the day of the game and the following day, on-demand streams for the song (audio and video combined) jumped from 46,000 total streams on February 1 and 2 to 310,000 on February 3 and 4, according to Nielsen Music.
SpongeBob wasn’t the only one to see a streaming increase after the Super Bowl. Streams for Maroon 5’s entire catalog went up by 38.3 percent (over the same period), while OutKast’s “The Way You Move,” part of which Big Boi performed, went up by 74 percent. As for Travis Scott, he didn’t see much of an increase (just a one percent gain in streams for “Sicko Mode”), probably because he’s already at the top of the streaming world and his numbers can’t get much higher than they already are.
There’s one fan who feels like they had good reason to not be thrilled about the SpongeBob cameo: He had previously shared a video he edited so the SpongeBob band was performing “Sicko Mode,” and he was pretty upset because he believes the NFL stole his idea.
