New Super Bowl (And TV) Viewing Record: 123.7M Viewers
- by Wayne Friedman , February 13, 2024
The Super Bowl broke another record this year for the big NFL event, up 7.4% to 123.7 million average viewers -- on the CBS Television Network, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, CBS Sports, and NFL digital properties, including NFL+. It was also a new record for the largest TV viewed program ever.
CBS Television Network itself pulled in 120.3 million viewers -- the most ever for a single TV network.
The data also includes viewing on digital (DTVR), out-of-home (OOH), MVPD/vMVPDs, and digital properties of CBS Sports. Spanish-language broadcast on Univision recorded 2.3 million viewers; viewing on kid-focused Nickelodeon and Nick-at-Nite totaled 1.2 million.
Average combined household data for this year's game was a 43.5 rating/83 share.
Last year's game on Fox Television Network and other digital platforms earned 115.1 million viewers; with a 40.7 combined rating.
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CBS says the game was the most-streamed in Super Bowl history, led by a record-setting audience on Paramount+. CBS and Nielsen did not reveal any streaming viewer data details.
The close “Super Bowl LVIII” game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, which went into overtime, gave the Chiefs back-to-back victories for the pro football championship.
CBS Sports says 202.4 million viewers watched all or part of Super Bowl LVIII across all networks -- the highest unduplicated total audience in history. This was 10% more than last year’s Super Bowl (184 million).
EDO Ad EnGage says Super Bowl LVIII pulled in an estimated $757.2 million in national TV advertising, producing 10.6 billion impressions coming from 87 commercial airings.
Three top Super Bowl advertisers spent an estimated $35 million each -- Temu, Verizon Wireless and Universal Pictures for the event.
The data included the prime-time game and post-game analysis advertising spend.
This story has been updated
Wayne, the Nielsen estimate of the "total audience" of the game gives some indication of its true reach as the average minute "audience" is only a snapshot in time and does not fully describe what happened. So, Nielsen estimates that 202 million people watched all or part of the show while 123 million "viewed" an averaqe minute---I assume that that this refers to commercial minutes. Of course, the actual eyes-on-screen viewing was considerably lower than what is called "audience" in these reports as many "viewers" left the room at various points while the show was in progress and many others were not attentive from time to time.
Sports is not generally sold on commercial minute ratings, but total program.