The Sunday night broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII attracted a record-breaking 123.4 million viewers according to preliminary Nielsen data released on Monday.
This massive audience, which marked a major ratings win for CBS and its affiliated streaming platforms, also puts the Kansas City Chiefs’ overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers on par with the 1969 moon landing as the most-watched program in the history of American television.
According to CBS, Sunday night’s audience averaged 123.4 million, but at least 202.4 million people tuned in for at least part of the game. 120 million of those views came from CBS’ main network feed—the largest-ever audience for a single network—and the remainder was split between Univision, Paramount+, the NFL app, and Nickelodeon (which provided its own coverage with commentary from Spongebob Squarepants and friends).
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The size of the Paramount+ audience also made for the most-streamed football game of all time.
Overall viewership marked a 7 percent increase over NBC’s coverage of last year’s Super Bowl between the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, which set the previous record of 115.1 million viewers. The audience for Super Bowl LVIII was so massive, in fact, that it may have tied with the moon landing in 1969, which drew in an estimated 125-150 million viewers (precise numbers from before the creation of standardized viewer metrics are difficult to determine).
Related: Kansas City Chiefs Snag Overtime Victory in Super Bowl LVIII
The record size of this audience has been attributed to a variety of factors, primarily Nielsen counting out-of-home viewers in its ratings in all 50 states for the first time. The fact that this game was only the second of 58 Super Bowls to go into overtime likely drew additional eyes in the final minutes.
Large fan bases also certainly played a part in drawing a massive audience. Both the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers are legacy franchises with deeply loyal fans and their own respective championship histories.
However, this past season for the Chiefs saw a surge of new football fans drawn in by tight end Travis Kelce’s highly-publicized relationship with pop sensation Taylor Swift, meaning that a host of “Swifties” were likely tuning in as well.
The full Nielsen ratings report for Sunday night’s Super Bowl broadcast will be published on Tuesday.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
It seems that despite declining audience figures for mainstream media, ‘MSM’, the MSM may have a mass niche market for major sports events.
Thank you
Anthony of Sydney