NFL Super Bowl LVII Drew Viewers To Search - Here Are Main Themes

The National Football League expects that Sunday’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona could set the record for the most-watched Super Bowl. The previous record was set by the Patriots-vs.-Seahawks Super Bowl game with 114.4 million viewers in 2014.

Samba TV on Monday already reported that this year’s championship game saw a slight increase in viewership compared with last year’s game -- about half a percentage point higher compared with 2022’s Super Bowl LVI.

Overall, based on Samba TV’s analysis from its nationally weighted household panel -- which pulls from more than 25 million connected TVs in the U.S. that measure linear and streaming TV consumption -- 36.7 million households in the U.S. watched the Super Bowl this year compared with 36.5 million tuning in last year. This number does not include any mobile consumption or out-of-home viewership.

The halftime show, featuring pop artist Rihanna, drew a sizable audience this year, although down slightly from last year’s performance.

Approximately 28.5 million households in the U.S. tuned in for the Super Bowl Halftime Show sponsored by Apple Music, compared with 28.7 million who tuned in for last year’s show backed by Pepsi, according to Samba TV.

This year, all eyes were on Rihanna during the Super Bowl LVII half time show Sunday, and many took to Google Search to learn whether the entertainer is pregnant. In The Google search “is Rihanna pregnant” was the No. 1 question during the halftime show.

Google trending topics and breakout searches before the game included “silver linings playbook philadelphia eagles” with U.S., and during the game in the U.S. the query “is bradley cooper an eagles fan” skyrocketed more than 600%. 

Google and YouTube released a list of themes and most-viewed ads on its platform as of the end of Super Bowl LVII at the end of the game.

Global Gameday Views on YouTube, from 12 a.m. ET to the end of the game showed viewers are ready to take a vacation. Melissa McCarthy took the top spot in a 30-minute musical version for Booking.com, directed by Alex Prager of Arts & Sciences for agency Zulu Alpha Kilo. The campaign name was “Somewhere, Anywhere.”

The No. 2 spot went to John Travolta singing a different version of Grease‘s “Summer Nights” in the T-Mobile Super Bowl ad “New year. New neighbor.”

Skechers’ ad “Skechers x Snoop Dogg Big Game Commercial,” The Fast Saga ad “FAST X | Official Trailer, and Made by Google ad on Pixel took the top five spots. Rakuten came in at No. 6.

Themes and trends include higher viewership this year of Super Bowl ads on YouTube during the game -- at 95% -- compared with 2022. Watch time on YouTube in the living room during the Super Bowl rose by more than 75% compared with 2022.  

Not all Super Bowl ads went over well with viewers. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez faced a growing backlash on social media Monday after she criticized a pro-Christian group over the company's Super Bowl ad, calling it “fascism” on Twitter. 

"Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. Hobby Lobby founder and billionaire David Green told talk show host Glenn Beck his family helped fund the ad campaign, which includes more than just the one that ran during Super Bowl LVII.

 

 

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