Super Bowl Viewership Drops Year-Over-Year, Still Sets a Record
If you ask anyone who knows anything about television ratings, there are certain topics that they just know to be true.
Fox News crushes its cable news competition. Late night talk shows appear to be going the way of the dodo.
And the Super Bowl is the undisputed king of American television ratings — even when they’re down.
Super Bowl LX, which took place on Sunday, is no exception to this rule.
According to the New York Post, Sunday’s big game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots averaged a whopping 124.93 million viewers.
Notably, that is technically down from a year ago, when the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX.
The Eagles’ win over the vaunted Chiefs averaged 127.71 million viewers last year.
The Seahawks’ 29-13 thumping of the Patriots aired on NBC — and the network seemed thrilled with the results, even if it is technically down year-over-year.
“NBC Sports’ presentation of Super Bowl LX set an all-time media record as 137.8 million viewers watched in the second quarter as the Seattle Seahawks led 6-0 over the New England Patriots – marking the highest peak viewership in U.S. TV history,” the network crowed.
NBC Sports president Rick Cordella, whose network is also airing the Winter Olympics, celebrated the partnership with the NFL.
“The Super Bowl and the NFL once again delivered a blockbuster audience across the NBC broadcast network, Peacock, and Telemundo, and provided an unprecedented lead-in to our Primetime in Milan coverage,” Cordella said.
He added: “The Super Bowl and the Olympics are the two most powerful events in the world, and we salute our talented production, tech, and announce teams who delivered best-in-class presentations for our viewers, stations, and partners.”
Telemundo, the American Spanish sister network of NBC Sports, also enjoyed some of the Super Bowl glow — though it appears a number of the network’s viewers were only sticking around for the polarizing halftime show.
“Telemundo averaged 3.3 million viewers, marking the most-watched Super Bowl in U.S. Spanish-language history,” NBC Sports touted. “Telemundo’s audience peaked during the halftime show, with an average of 4.8 million viewers – the most-watched Super Bowl halftime in Spanish-language history.”
(The halftime show, headlined by controversial Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny, reportedly averaged 128.2 million viewers, per The New York Post.)
While the ratings for Super Bowl LX are obviously nothing to sneeze at, the 2.2 percent dip in annual viewership could be attributed to the lackluster nature of the game.
As mentioned above, the Seahawks dominated the Patriots, with the Seattle defense completely bottling up the potent New England offense. The Patriots scored late to make the final score look more respectable, but make no mistake, this was a one-sided thumping, which could’ve contributed to more viewers dipping out than in the Eagles-Chiefs game.
With the Super Bowl ratings bonanza now over, NBC Sports will lean heavily on Winter Olympics coverage.
However, just to give you a frame of reference, NBC Sports says that when the Super Bowl gave way to the network’s Olympics coverage, the number of viewers dropped precipitously.
Sunday’s post-Super Bowl Winter Olympics presentation averaged 42 million viewers.
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