Did you watch Spain thrash Italy 4-0 in the final of Euro 2012? Well, you’re not alone, of course – an estimated 250 million people from around the world tuned in to watch the game, and this army of football fans helped to trigger a new sporting tweets per second (TPS) record on Twitter.

In total, the match generated some 16.5 million tweets from all corners of the globe, culminating in a 15,358 TPS peak when the fourth goal was scored, a new sporting high for Twitter.

This chart shows the flow of tweets during the entire competition – the bigger spikes occurred during goals.

Back in May we reported that independent research suggested that activity during the Champions League final generated a heady 32,000 TPS watermark, making it the most tweeted-about event in history.

Still, official is official, so we’ll stick with Twitter’s records until somebody proves otherwise. In the meantime, here’s a tweet from Spain and FC Barcelona’s Andrés Iniesta, celebrating the win.

Great! This is amazing! This is for everybody, you deserve it! twitter.com/andresiniesta8…

— Andrés Iniesta (@andresiniesta8) July 1, 2012

(Source: Twitter blog. Soccer ball image via Shutterstock.)