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 data from Nielsen and CBS, which aired the game. That number easily surpassed last year’s record of 115.1 million, when Kansas City defeated the Philadelphia Eagles. The final Nielsen ratings for the Super Bowl will be announced on Tuesday.
The number is the total number who watched CBS, the Paramount+ streaming app, the Spanish-language channel Univision, the NFL digital channels or Nickelodeon, which aired a kid-friendly TV show. The vast majority watched the game on CBS, which recorded 120 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
The game had a lot going for it. It went to overtime, ended with a game-winning touchdown pass (for a 25-22 final score) and showcased an elite Kansas City team with a superstar quarterback, Patrick Mahomes. Kansas City’s original running back Travis Kelce also happens to be dating a big star in Taylor Swift, who attended the game in Las Vegas.
At a time when traditional viewership has been in freefall, the NFL, particularly the Super Bowl, has been immune to 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 the NFL ratings.
Viewership was up 7 percent, according to Nielsen, just shy of the record set in 2015. Several playoff games set ratings records, including the AFC championship game on CBS, which drew more than 55 million viewers, and a AFC divisional playoff game that drew more than 50 million. The NFC championship game was just short of a record.
League officials have pointed to several close games this season — along with a playoff chase that still included several teams toward the end — as major reasons the ratings rose. (It’s less clear how much Ms. Swift helped boost ratings.)
Other live events, such as some award shows, have also seen good returns recently. Last week, the Grammy Awards, also on CBS, drew about 17 million viewers, a 34 percent jump from last year’s ceremony. Ratings for the Oscars have risen in recent years.
The success of NFL telecasts stands in stark contrast to the rest of traditional television, which has had spectacular TVs for several years as more and more viewers migrate to on-demand streaming entertainment. Viewership among the major broadcast networks is down 12 percent since the current television season began in September.
Last year’s Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes have mostly starved networks of new episodes of scripted TV series for the past five months, and CBS has been particularly hard hit. According to Nielsen, the network’s prime-time audience is down 30 percent since the start of the television season.
However, help may be on the way. CBS is releasing new episodes of scripted shows this week, and promotional videos for the next lineup were released throughout the Super Bowl telecast. The overtime game also meant additional commercial breaks, which earned CBS an estimated $35 million more, Adweek reported. CBS had sold hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial time for the game.
