Capping a season of declines, Super Bowl ratings and viewership hit nine-year lows.
Sunday’s Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl 52 scored a 43.1 rating and 103.4 million viewers on NBC, per Nielsen fast-nationals — down 5% in ratings and 7% in viewership from last year on FOX (Patriots-Falcons: 45.3, 111.3M) and down 8% in both measures from 2016 on CBS (Broncos-Panthers: 46.6, 111.9M).
Including the Spanish-language audience of 543,000 on NBC Universo — down 16% from last year on Fox Deportes (650K) — the combined TV and streaming audience was 106 million. That still marks a 7% decline from last year’s across-all-platforms audience of 113.7 million.
With or without streaming viewership included, the Eagles’ upset win was the lowest rated and least-watched Super Bowl since 2009 (Steelers-Cardinals: 42.0, 98.7M). It was the first Super Bowl to hit at least a nine-year low since 1990, when 49ers-Broncos hit a 21-year low in ratings and a 9-year low in viewership.
It was also the first Super Bowl since 2009 with a smaller TV audience than the series finale of M*A*S*H in 1983 (106.0M). That was the most-watched program in U.S. TV history from 1983-2010, but had been topped by every Super Bowl since.
Despite the lows, Sunday’s game still delivered the ninth-largest Super Bowl audience ever and the tenth-largest audience in U.S. television history.
Super Bowl ratings and viewership have now declined in three straight years. The only other time ratings have dropped in three straight years was 1981-83. Viewership had never before declined in three straight years.
The Super Bowl completed a historically poor postseason for the NFL. All ten playoff games posted a decline in ratings and viewership compared to last year, the first such occurrence since the current scheduling format began in 2002.
Sunday’s TV audience peaked at 112.3 million from 10-10:15 PM ET, down 5% from last year’s peak of 117.7 million in the same quarter-hour. The Justin Timberlake halftime performance had 106.6 million from 8:15-8:30, down 9% from last year (117.5M) and down 7% from 2016 (115.5M).
A complete list of all Super Bowl ratings is available here. The complete list of all 2017 NFL ratings is available here.
[Sun. numbers from NBC Sports PR 2.5]
