In television’s most important demo, Super Bowl ratings were the lowest in 13 years.
Sunday’s Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl 52 scored a 33.4 rating among adults 18-49, down 10% from last year (37.1), down 11% from 2016 (37.7), and the game’s lowest rating in the demo since the previous Patriots-Eagles Super Bowl in 2005 (33.2).
Outside of 2005, no Super Bowl has had a lower rating in the demo since at least 1992.
The corresponding audience of 43.0 million viewers is actually smaller than in 2005 (43.1M). It represents the game’s smallest demo audience in at least a decade. Viewership in the demo has now declined in seven straight years.
Adults 18-49 viewership made up just 41.6% of the total TV audience (103.4M), the smallest percentage in at least a decade. The demo accounted for 50% of the audience in 2008 and that share has declined in each successive year.
It was not clear how many of the 2.0 million streaming viewers were in the adults 18-49 demographic, but even if all of them were within that age group, this year’s numbers would still be the lowest in at least a decade.
The game posted even sharper declines in adults 18-34. It had a 28.6 rating in that demo, down 13% from last year (32.9) and down 14% from 2016 (33.3). The corresponding viewership number was not available.
As for TV’s other young adult demographic, the Super Bowl had a 37.0 in adults 25-54 — down 9% from last year (40.5) and down 10% from 2016 (41.3).
