Figures for this year’s Super Bowl are yet to come, but if they are anything like the past two years, out-of-home viewing will obscure a steeper-than-thought decline in viewership.
With out-of-home viewing excluded, the main Super Bowl broadcast averaged just 77.43 million viewers last year on NBC (Rams-Bengals) and 79.81 million two years ago on CBS (Buccaneers-Chiefs) — which would rank as the two smallest audiences for the game since 49ers-Broncos in 1990 (73.85M). (Figures for this year’s game were not immediately available as of Monday evening.)
The out-of-home audience last year was 21.75 million viewers, accounting for 22% of the total NBC audience of 99.18 million. The out-of-home audience two years ago was a considerably lower 15.39 million — no doubt owing to restrictions on public gatherings — accounting for 16% of the total CBS audience of 95.20 million.
In the three prior years, when out-of-home viewing was tracked but not included in Nielsen’s final nationals, the out-of-home audience was in the 11-12 million range and the in-home audience ranged between 98 and 103 million. Super Bowl 55 (Chiefs-49ers) — the final Super Bowl before Nielsen began including out-of-home — averaged an in-home audience of 100.45 million on FOX and (per Adweek) an out-of-home audience of 11 million.
The sharp decline of in-home viewership tracks with the trend in household ratings (which by definition do not include out-of-home viewing). The Super Bowl averaged a 36.9 rating last year and a 38.6 two years ago, the two lowest ratings for the game since 1969.
It is worth noting that the in-home audience is just one component of the viewership, along with out-of-home, Spanish-language simulcasts and streaming. Last year’s Super Bowl averaged 77.43 million in-home, 21.75 million out-of-home, 1.9 million on Telemundo, and 11.2 million on digital platforms for a total of 112.3 million. With that said, in-home is the component of the audience that is most directly comparable to past years; out-of-home viewing was not measured at all prior to 2016, there was no Spanish-language simulcast prior to 2014, and there was no streaming simulcast prior to 2012.
