Sunday night’s Super Bowl overtime broke viewership records.
An audience of 123.4 million watched the Kansas City Chiefs beat 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 beat the Philadelphia Eagles. Final Nielsen ratings for the Super Bowl will be released Tuesday.
That figure is the total number of people who watched CBS, the streaming app Paramount+, the Spanish-language channel Univision, the NFL’s digital channels or Nickelodeon, which aired a kid-friendly TV show. The vast majority watched the game on CBS, which had 120 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
The game had a lot going for it. It went into overtime, ended 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. Travis Kelce, Kansas City’s starting tight end, is also dating a megastar in Taylor Swift, who attended the game in Las Vegas.
At a time when traditional television audiences are plummeting, the NFL, and particularly the Super Bowl, has remained insulated from the massive viewership shifts affecting the rest of the media world. According to Nielsen, 13 of the last 15 Super Bowls have attracted more than 100 million viewers, a larger audience than in previous decades.
Sunday’s performance also capped off a big year for NFL ratings.
Viewership increased 7 percent, according to Nielsen, just below the record set in 2015. Several playoff games set viewership records, including the AFC Championship Game on CBS, which any further. more than 55 million viewersand an AFC divisional playoff game that drew more than 50 millions. The NFC Championship Game was a bit short of a record.
League officials having pointed to numerous close games this season — as well as a playoff chase that still included several teams near the end — as the main reasons why ratings jumped. (It’s less clear how much Ms. Swift helped boost viewership.)
Other live events, like some award shows, have also seen good returns recently. Last week’s Grammy Awards, also broadcast on CBS, attracted an estimated 17 million viewers, a 34 percent increase from last year’s ceremony. Oscar audiences have increased in consecutive years.
The success of NFL telecasts stands in stark contrast to the rest of traditional television, which has seen plummeting viewership for several years as more viewers migrate to on-demand streaming entertainment. Viewership on major broadcast networks has declined 12 percent since the current television season began in September.
Strikes by Hollywood writers and actors last year have mostly starved broadcast networks of new episodes of scripted TV series over the past five months, and CBS has been particularly hard hit. The network’s prime-time audience has declined 30 percent since the start of the television season, according to Nielsen.
However, help could be on the way. CBS is rolling out new episodes of scripted shows this week, and promotional videos for upcoming programming have been circulating throughout the Super Bowl broadcast. The overtime game also involved additional commercial breaks, which earned CBS an estimated additional $35 million. Advertising week reported. CBS had sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising time for the game.
