The NFL may be among the most male-oriented of the major sports, but women tuned in en masse to the league’s biggest game.
Super Bowl XLIII drew 38.3 million female viewers on NBC Sunday night, the largest female audience for a television program in fifteen years, and the third-largest female audience for any television program since Nielsen “began tracking the demographic“ in 1991.
The only two programs to draw more female viewers since ’91 involved Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding at the 1994 Winter Olympics.
To put this in perspective, the 38.3 million female viewers for Super Bowl XLIII is more than the number of total viewers for any non-NFL sports telecast since the Opening Ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Among the events to draw fewer total viewers: the 2006 Texas/USC Rose Bowl (35.6 million), NBC’s coverage of Michael Phelps‘ eighth gold medal (31.6 million) and Yankees/Red Sox Game 7 in 2004 (31.5 million).
