Ratings predictions and analysis for Sunday’s Super Bowl 57. Where does the Super Bowl audience stand heading into this year’s “Big Game”?
Where does the Super Bowl audience stand?
The biggest day in football (and sports, and television) has arrived once again. Super Bowl Sunday has remained the ultimate communal viewing experience even in an era of decline for almost all other programming, and there is no reason to expect that to change anytime soon. Nonetheless, one can see signs of erosion if one looks under the hood.
The first and most obvious of those signs is the household rating, which last year dropped to 36.9 — the lowest for any Super Bowl since 1969. After topping a 40 rating for three-straight decades, the Super Bowl has fallen below that mark in each of the past two years. The decline is largely obscured when looking at the viewership, which in the past two years has been bolstered by the inclusion of out-of-home viewing. Last year’s linear audience of 99.2 million ranks just outside of the ten largest ever for a Super Bowl.
Yet even in viewership it is clear that the “Big Game” is not quite as big as it had been. Last year’s audience of 99 million (with out-of-home included) is lower than the 103 million the game averaged – without out-of-home — five years ago. Factor in the out-of-home audience (which from 2018-20 was issued separately from the final nationals) and the drop-off is steep: from nearly 115 million in ’18 to shy of 100 million four years later. The drop-off remains steep even when compared to years when no out-of-home viewing was measured at all. Last year’s game fell more than ten million viewers shy of Patriots-Falcons in ’17 (111.3M), Broncos-Panthers in ’16 (111.9M), Patriots-Seahawks in ’15 (114.4M), Seahawks-Broncos in ’14 (112.2M), Giants-Patriots in ’12 (111.4M) and Packers-Steelers in ’11 (111.0M).
Super Bowl ratings, viewership, past decade
For the full list of historical Super Bowl ratings and viewership, see the following link.
Beyond out-of-home, streaming makes up for some of that shortfall. Last year’s streaming audience was the highest on record for a Super Bowl, no doubt bolstered by NBC’s streaming service Peacock. NBC estimated that 11.2 million viewers across six million devices streamed the game, and between in-home, out-of-home, Spanish-language simulcasts and streaming, the total audience was 112.3 million — on par with what the Super Bowl drew throughout the 2010s (albeit on a linear, in-home basis alone).
To put it another way, in order to match the in-home, one-platform audience of a decade ago, one must add in as many metrics and platforms as possible. Such is the state of TV viewing. It also means that even as the Super Bowl suffers from some of the same viewing erosion afflicting all of television, there is always some previously unaccounted-for audience to make up the gap.
As for this year’s game specifically, this year’s pairing is better-than-most on paper, pitting the top two teams in their respective conferences in a matchup that pits a big-market upstart against the league’s most decorated quarterback (now that Tom Brady has retired). These teams have both won the Super Bowl within the past five years, though the 2018 Eagles are a far different team than their current incarnation. If the game is close, expect viewership to at least exceed the past two years. The out-of-home audience should be sharply higher than the past two years, which were marked by restrictions on public gatherings. The streaming audience, however, should be lower. Unlike CBS and NBC, FOX does not have an over-the-top streaming service to push. The last time FOX had the Super Bowl, its streaming audience was 3.4 million — compared to 5.7 million two years ago on CBS (Paramount+) and 6.0 million on NBC last year (Peacock).
Super Bowl 57: Chiefs-Eagles (6:30p FOX, Fox Deportes). Prediction: 38.2 rating & 103.8M viewers on FOX + 2.03M on Fox Deportes + 4.01M additional streaming viewership not tracked by Nielsen = a total of 109.9M across all platforms.
Additional predictions:
NBA: Grizzlies-Celtics (2:30p Sun ABC). The Memphis Grizzlies make only their third-ever regular season appearance on broadcast television as they face the Celtics on Super Bowl Sunday. With this matchup a possible Finals preview, expect a solid increase in ratings and viewership over Hawks-Celtics in the same Super Bowl Sunday window last year (1.0, 1.87M). Prediction: 1.2, 2.24M.
PGA Tour: final round of the Phoenix Open (3p Sun CBS). The first three PGA Tour windows on CBS this season have declined by double-digits to historic lows, not a great sign as the Tour begins its first full season in competition with LIV. Can the Phoenix Open buck the trend? Last year’s final round had a 2.0 and 3.59 million. Prediction: 1.7, 3.02M.
WCBB: #3 LSU-#1 South Carolina (2p Sun ESPN). A top three matchup of SEC rivals should deliver one of the top women’s college basketball audiences this season. Do not expect a repeat of last week’s million-plus performance on FOX, but anything north of 600,000 (on cable) is a strong number for women’s hoops. Prediction: 613K.
Previous predictions
— NFC Championship: 49ers-Eagles. Prediction: 45.67M; result: 47.50M
— AFC Championship: Bengals-Chiefs. Prediction: 49.18M; result: 53.12M
— NBA: Nuggets-Sixers. Prediction: 1.99M; result: 1.76M
— NBA: Knicks-Nets. Prediction: 2.47M; result: 2.45M
— NBA: Lakers-Celtics. Prediction: 3.03M; result: 3.69M
— Australian Open men’s final: Djokovic-Tsitsipas. Prediction: 478K; result: 439K
— PGA Tour: final round at Torrey Pines. Prediction: 2.59M; result: 2.20M
— CBB: Kansas-Kentucky. Prediction: 2.01M; result:
