As Jay-Z says, "Men lie. Women lie. Numbers don't." After being pushed back a week due to any possible conflict with the NBA Finals, the BET Awards made a splash in its first time being held in July, drawing 7.4 million viewers on Sunday night. In addition to the high ratings, BET's social numbers were through the roof as the award show generated 10 million unique tweets — up 683 percent from 2011. Overall, the BET Awards were the "third most social tentpole event" in 2012 behind only the Super Bowl and the Grammys.

The trending hashtag #BETAWARDS averaged 23,932 tweets-per-minute during the live telecast and experienced 109 separate trending topics from pre-show to post show. Also, the BET Awards app received over 270k downloads.