Super Bowl ratings hit another multi-decade low, but streaming and out-of-home lifted viewership past the 100 million mark to a five-year high.
Sunday’s Rams-Bengals Super Bowl 56 averaged a 36.9 rating and 99.18 million viewers on NBC alone, 101.1 million viewers including Spanish-language coverage on Telemundo, and 112.3 million across all platforms — marking the lowest rated Super Bowl since 1969 (Jets-Colts: 36.0) but the most-watched across all platforms since 2017 (Patriots-Falcons: 113.7M). [For a full list of historical Super Bowl ratings, see the following page.]
The primary NBC telecast declined 3% in ratings but increased 4% in viewership from Buccaneers-Chiefs on CBS last year (38.2, 95.2M) and declined 11% and 1% respectively from Chiefs-49ers on FOX two years ago (41.6, 100.45M). The across-all-platforms audience increased 13% from last year’s figure of 99.7 million. (Figures for last year’s Super Bowl are the corrected, revised numbers that remedy Nielsen’s undercount of out-of-home viewing. Out-of-home was not included at all two years ago.)
NBC said Tuesday that the Super Bowl averaged a streaming audience of 11.2 million viewers across 6.0 million devices on Peacock and the various other NBC and NFL digital platforms, a record for the game. The network says the 11.2 million is a viewers-per-stream figure not directly comparable to past years, when co-viewing was not as prevalent. The figure comparable to past years is the 6.0 million, which marks a 5% increase over last year (5.7M).
It would thus be the case that an apples-to-apples across-all-platforms figure would be around 107 million, still up 7% from last year.
The discrepancy between ratings and viewership can be explained by the fact that the two biggest factors in Sunday’s viewership — out-of-home viewing and streaming — do not factor into the household rating. While Nielsen’s household ratings panel includes homes with TV-connected streaming devices, the streaming data NBC reported Tuesday are from Adobe Analytics. In addition, out-of-home viewing is not included in household ratings by definition.
In addition to the record streaming audience, the Spanish-language audience of 1.9 million on Telemundo was also a record-high — more-than-doubling the previous high of 757,000 set by Fox Deportes two years ago.
Viewership for the primary NBC telecast peaked at 104.4 million from 7:45-8 PM ET, during the first half. The halftime show, featuring Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent, averaged 103.4 million from 8:15-8:30 PM ET, up 7% from last year (96.7M).
NBC’s 15-minute postgame coverage averaged 54.07 million viewers. A corrected figure for last year’s postgame was not available, but the initial undercounted audience was 51.54 million.
[Nielsen estimates from NBC, ShowBuzz Daily 2.15]
