by Sunday night’s Super Bowl overtime broke ratings records.
An audience of 123.4 million watched the Kansas City Chiefs defeat the San Francisco 49ers, according to preliminary numbers from Nielsen and CBS, which broadcast the game. That figure easily eclipsed last year’s record of $115.1 million, when Kansas City defeated the Philadelphia Eagles. Final Nielsen ratings for the Super Bowl will be released Tuesday.
The figure is the total number of viewers on CBS, the Paramount+ streaming app, the Spanish-language channel Univision, the NFL’s digital channels or Nickelodeon, which aired a children’s broadcast. The vast majority watched the game on CBS, which recorded 120 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
The game had a lot to offer. It went into overtime, concluded with a game-winning touchdown pass (for a final score of 25-22), and featured an elite Kansas City team with a superstar quarterback, Patrick Mahomes. It turns out that Travis Kelce, Kansas City’s starting tight end, is also dating a megastar, Taylor Swift, who attended the game in Las Vegas.
At a time when traditional television ratings have been in free fall, the NFL, particularly the Super Bowl, has remained immune to the massive viewership shifts affecting the rest of the media world. Thirteen of the last 15 Super Bowls have drawn more than 100 million viewers, according to Nielsen, a larger audience than in previous decades.
Sunday’s performance also capped a big year for NFL ratings.
Viewership increased 7 percent, according to Nielsen, falling just shy of the record set in 2015. Several playoff games set ratings records, including the AFC Championship Game on CBS, which earned more 55 million viewersand an AFC divisional playoff game that attracted more than 50 million. The NFC championship game was a bit short of a record.
league officials have pointed Numerous close games this season, along with a playoff chase that still included several teams toward the end, were the main reasons ratings increased. (It’s less clear how much Swift helped increase viewership.)
Other live events, such as some awards shows, have also done well recently. Last week, the Grammy Awards, also broadcast on CBS, drew approximately 17 million viewers, a 34 percent increase from last year’s ceremony. Oscar ratings have increased in consecutive years.
The success of the NFL telecasts stands in stark contrast to the rest of traditional television, which has seen plummeting viewership for several years as more and more viewers migrate to on-demand online entertainment. Viewership among the major television networks has dropped 12 percent since the current television season began in September.
Last year’s Hollywood writers and actors strikes deprived television networks of new episodes of scripted television series for the past five months, and CBS has been especially hard hit. The network’s prime-time audience is down 30 percent since the television season began, according to Nielsen.
However, help may be on the way. CBS is releasing new episodes of scripted shows this week and promotional videos for upcoming programming circulated during the Super Bowl broadcast. The overtime game also meant additional commercial breaks, which earned CBS an estimated additional $35 million. Adweek reported. CBS had sold hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial time for the game.
