A ho-hum game on paper that was little better on the field, the Seahawks-Patriots Super Bowl was the first in five years to post a decline in viewership from the prior year.
Sunday’s Seahawks-Patriots Super Bowl 60 averaged a 39.4 rating and 124.93 million viewers across NBC, Peacock and Telemundo, down 6% in ratings and 2% in viewership from Eagles-Chiefs last year on FOX, Tubi and Fox Deportes (41.7, 127.71M). It was the first Super Bowl to post a decline in viewership since Buccaneers-Chiefs on CBS in 2021, which took place at the height of the industry-wide COVID slump. (It was the second-straight Super Bowl to post a decline in household ratings.)
Notably, the viewership figure is Nielsen-only and does not include Adobe Analytics. NBC for years has used Adobe Analytics, rather than Nielsen, to measure its streaming viewership. But at least for this Super Bowl, NBC’s Nielsen audience includes its streaming audience on Peacock and other digital platforms.
Despite the decline, the Seahawks’ easy win officially ranks as the second-most watched Super Bowl — and thus the second-most watched program in U.S. television history. Keep in mind it was just the sixth Super Bowl since Nielsen began tracking out-of-home viewing in its estimates, and just the second since the company expanded its out-of-home sample to 100 percent of markets in the lower 48 states.
The inclusion of out-of-home viewing gives modern editions of the game a distinct leg up on all prior years, including the previous matchup of the Patriots and Seahawks 11 years ago in Super Bowl 49 — which drew 114.8 million without any out-of-home viewing included. It is a virtual lock that more viewers were watching in 2015.
The household rating, which by definition does not include out-of-home viewing and as such is largely comparable to prior years, was the third-lowest for the game since 1990. It was only the fourth Super Bowl since Super Bowl 5 in 1971 to average fewer than 40% of U.S. television homes, joining the 1990 game, Bengals-Rams on NBC in 2022 (37.9) and Buccaneers-Chiefs in the aforementioned COVID year of 2021 (38.4).
The Super Bowl also had a lower share than in the past two years, but this year’s 79 — meaning 79% of U.S. homes with televisions in use were tuned to the game in the average minute — was still the third-highest ever for the game (tying Super Bowl 1).
Viewership peaked in the 7:45 PM ET quarter-hour at 137.8 million viewers, which per NBC is the highest peak quarter-hour in U.S. television history — with the aforementioned caveats regarding Nielsen methodological changes.
The much-discussed halftime show, headlined by Bad Bunny, averaged 128.2 million viewers in the 8:15 PM ET quarter-hour — down from last year’s 133.5 million for Kendrick Lamar and 129.3 million for Usher two years ago. It was still the third-most watched Super Bowl halftime show on record, though as with the overall game figures, comparisons to past years are skewed by Nielsen methodological changes.
(It should be noted that several mainstream websites and social media accounts on Monday ran with a halftime figure of 135 million, based on what would seem to have been a made up social media post.)
Telemundo averaged 4.8 million during the halftime show, marking the largest audience for a Spanish-language broadcast of the event. The full Telemundo broadcast averaged 3.3 million, surpassing Univision’s 2.3 million two years ago as the highest for the Super Bowl on Spanish-language television. The Spanish-language Super Bowl broadcast began in 2014 and has typically aired on low-wattage cable channels like Fox Deportes and ESPN Deportes, with this year marking only the fourth time the game has aired on Telemundo or Univision.
After the superstar-laden Kansas City Chiefs made the Super Bowl in five of six years to start the decade, this year’s Seahawks-Patriots matchup was light on familiar names. While the teams’ 2015 meeting remains one of the most iconic sporting events in American history, ending on an interception at the goal line by Malcolm Butler, they have no other shared history and no real rivalry.
This year’s Super Bowl was in some ways a carbon copy of the 2019 Patriots-Rams matchup, a reprise of an iconic Super Bowl from more than a decade earlier, but otherwise lacking in any real hook. Just like that 2019 game, this year’s Super Bowl was a rough watch offensively, with neither team scoring a touchdown until the second half.
