It does not mean much for historical comparisons, but Super Bowl viewership surged to nearly 120 million with Nielsen’s out-of-home measure added to the mix.
Super Bowl 52 had an out-of-home audience of more than 12 million viewers, NBC announced Thursday, boosting the TV audience from 103.4 million to 115.6 million viewers. Including streaming viewership on NBC and NFL digital platforms, the game had 118.2 million.
Nielsen began releasing out-of-home viewership last year, but figures for last year’s Super Bowl were never released publicly. As a result, it is impossible to know how Sunday’s audience of 118.2 million compares to last year — or to the many years before when out-of-home viewing was not measured.
It seems unlikely that the out-of-home audience would have grown so significantly in one year to wipe out the 7% decline in viewership — or the nine-year lows — reported earlier this week.
It should be pointed out that the Nielsen out-of-home figures are for the NBC broadcast only. NBC has not signed up for the Nielsen total audience metric that incorporates streaming viewership into the traditional ratings data, so out-of-home viewing on digital platforms is not included in the 12 million. The streaming viewership NBC reports is from Adobe Analytics.
The 12% lift provided by out-of-home viewing is not unusual. Sports Business Journal reported last year that several events on ESPN and Fox Sports had seen viewership grow by double-digit percentages once out-of-home was included.
As NBC noted in a Thursday press release, this is the first time that the out-of-home measures have been released so quickly after the event in question.
[Thu. numbers from NBC Sports PR 2.8]
