What is the most-watched Super Bowl (and hence, U.S. television program) on record? Answering the question is not as easy as it may seem.
Officially, the most-watched Super Bowl on record was Chiefs-Eagles last year, with a Nielsen audience of 115.1 million across FOX (114.21 million) and Fox Deportes (882K). That figure, which was revised upward from 113.1 million after Nielsen caught an error months after the fact, surpassed the previous high of 114.8 million for Patriots-Seahawks in 2015. (The 2015 game still ranks as the most-watched Super Bowl on a single network with an official Nielsen audience of 114.4 million on NBC.)
Yet what is ‘official’ by Nielsen standards has changed in the eight years since the company began measuring out-of-home viewing. Out-of-home has only been included in Nielsen’s official currency since the fall of 2020, but the company had been tracking that data separately since 2016. Adding in the out-of-home viewing Nielsen tracked from 2016-19, the most-watched Super Bowl on record was actually Patriots-Falcons in 2017. New England’s famous 28-3 comeback averaged 112 million viewers officially, but 124.6 million including out-of-home — easily the largest Super Bowl audience Nielsen has ever measured.
The following year’s Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl ranks second with out-of-home included, averaging 117.9 million (compared to an official audience of 104 million.).
Of course, out-of-home was not measured at all prior to 2016. Figures for the first 50 Super Bowls consist solely of in-home viewing. While that still accounts for Super Bowl parties and other in-home gatherings, any viewing in bars and at public gatherings simply was not tracked. Thus it is unlikely that even Patriots-Falcons can legitimately claim the Nielsen crown.
All things being equal, it is almost certainly the case that the Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl in 2015 ranks as the most-watched. With an in-home audience of 114.8 million, adding an out-of-home audience of just ten million would be enough to surpass Patriots-Falcons in ’17. (Patriots-Falcons, it should be noted, added 12.6 million viewers with out-of-home viewing.)
A look at the household rating backs up the case. Household ratings by definition do not include out-of-home viewing, providing perhaps the only apples-to-apples historical comparison possible. Chiefs-Eagles last year had a 40.4 rating, merely the highest in three years, surpassing two historically low outings in 2021 (Buccaneers-Chiefs: 38.6) and 2022 (Rams-Bengals: 36.9). Patriots-Falcons had a 45.3 rating, actually the lowest in seven years at the time. Patriots-Seahawks on the other hand averaged a 47.5 rating, still the highest of any Super Bowl since 1986 (48.3) and the fourth-highest overall.
While the above makes a good argument for Patriots-Seahawks surpassing the other ‘record’ holders, one might question the idea that it is truly the most-watched Super Bowl. After all, if it ranks fourth in household ratings, surely the top three were in actuality the most-watched. To explain why this is not the case requires a brief breakdown of household ratings and Nielsen universe estimates.
Unlike viewership, the household rating is a proportion — the percentage of homes watching a program in the average minute out of the total number of Nielsen-estimated homes. Thus it is heavily affected by the number of homes in the Nielsen universe. (Viewership is of course affected by those universe estimates as well, and population growth has skewed historical comparisons much in the same way as out-of-home viewing, albeit more gradually.) As a percentage of television homes, household ratings will inevitably be higher in years when the Nielsen universe was far smaller, and especially so in years when alternative entertainment options were few and far between.
The 49ers-Bengals Super Bowl in 1982 ranks as the highest rated ever played with a 49.1 rating, or 49.1% of the 81.5 million homes that were part of the Nielsen universe in the 1981-82 television season. Washington-Miami the following year ranks second with a 48.6, or 48.6% of the 83.3 million homes in the 1982-83 season. Placing third, the ’85 Bears’ rout of the Patriots averaged a 48.3, or 48.3% of the 85.9 million homes in the 1985-86 season.
Patriots-Seahawks averaged 47.5% of homes in a television universe consisting of 116.4 million. The television universe expanded by nearly 35 million homes from 1982 to 2014 and the rating was a mere one-and-a-half points off the all-time high. Needless to say, getting 48% of 116 million is far more impressive than 49% of 82 million. While one could suggest that those 1980s games would have maintained their percentage of homes even in a larger television universe, the expansion of alternate entertainment options over that span makes that seem unlikely.
Essentially, the household rating can tell you which Super Bowl had the biggest piece of the television pie, but it cannot tell you which Super Bowl had the largest audience. As the population has grown — pushing Super Bowl viewership from 70 million in the 1970s to 80 million in the 1980s, 90 million in the 1990s and 110 million in the 2010s — it is possible to grow one’s audience to unimaginable heights while still attracting a smaller portion of the audience than in the days of three channels.
There is one record held by the Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl. The game’s 47.5 rating translated into 55.34 million homes, exceeding any television program before or since. Even the series finale of M*A*S*H — the highest rated television program ever with a whopping 60.3 in 1983 — averaged only 50.1 million. (You may notice that link says the M*A*S*H finale averaged 125 million viewers, but that was the total who watched all or part of the show. The average minute audience was 106 million and that is what is comparable to the viewership discussed in this article.)
Comparing viewership trends over the course of 58 years is an evidently inexact science, but there is no other Super Bowl with a 1980s-level rating and 2020s-level viewership. It seems unlikely that there will be another any time soon. The next ‘record’ audience, however, is almost certainly just days away. With Nielsen expanding its out-of-home viewing panel later this year, it will surely be short-lived.
