Glendale, Feb. 14 (BNA): Fox hoped that a matchup between two top teams at the Super Bowl and a close game would lead to a record-breaking night.
Although Sunday’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles came to a field goal with 8 seconds remaining, Fox fell short of his own.
The Chiefs’ rally to defeat the Eagles 38-35 is on track to become the third most-watched TV show in history, with an estimated 113 million people watching, according to preliminary numbers released Monday, the Associated Press reported.
Fox said audience recognition includes broadcasts on Fox and Fox Deportes as well as broadcasts on Fox and NFL digital sites. Figures by Nielsen’s Fast National data and Adobe Analytics.
The 2015 game between New England and Seattle on NBC set the record at 114,442,000 viewers (not including broadcasts), followed by Super Bowl 51 in 2017 on Fox between Atlanta and New England (113,668,000).
It was Fox’s tenth Super Bowl since it began broadcasting NFL games in 1994 and the second most-watched program in Fox Sports history.
It would also be a slight increase from the average of 112.3 million in the Super Bowl last year.
The Los Angeles Rams’ victory over the Cincinnati Bengals was broadcast by NBC and Telemundo and broadcast on Peacock and NFL digital websites.
According to Adobe Analytics, this year’s digital stream averaged 7 million Super Bowl streams, an 18% increase over last year (6 million) and more than double the last Super Bowl in 2020 (3.4 million).
This was the third year in a row that the average stream exceeded 5 million. The first Super Bowl broadcast, in 2012, averaged 346,000.
Rihanna’s halftime show averaged 118.7 million viewers, making it the second most watched show in Super Bowl history. Katy Perry’s 2015 performance holds the highest mark at 121 million.
The game’s Spanish-language audience averaged 951,000, a record for the most-watched Super Bowl in Spanish-language cable television history. It was also the most watched non-football event in Spanish-language cable history.
The Spanish-language number is down from last year’s record of 1.9 million on Telemundo, which unlike Fox Deportes broadcast affiliates in 90 markets.
The Super Bowl has been televised in Spanish in the United States since 2014.
The final Nielsen data will be available on Tuesday, including English-only TV numbers. After Super Bowls averaged more than 100 million viewers from 2010 to 2018, four out of five games before this year were below that number due to cord cuts.
That included 95.2 million for the 2021 Super Bowl between Tampa Bay and Kansas City, which was the lowest average for a TV-only game since 2007.
If Sunday’s number can improve on last year’s 99.18 million, it will be the first time since 2015 that there have been increases for two consecutive years.
Unsurprisingly, Kansas City and Philadelphia are the top-rated markets. Kansas City led the way with a rating of 52.0 and an 87 share rating followed by Philadelphia with a score of 46.3/77.
The rating is the percentage of TV homes tuned in. Share refers to the percentage of the audience watching television that watches a particular program at that time.
Cincinnati, which lost to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship game, and Minneapolis also scored 77 darts.
The flood of advertisements during the year’s most-watched event on television was easily heavy on celebrities Ben Affleck, Ozzy Osbourne, Matt Damon, Maya Rudolph, Martha Stewart and the cast members of the Breaking Bad.
Steve Williamson, senior vice president of market research firm GWI. Surveys show that trust in brands has plummeted this year and companies have been looking for well-known names to boost.
“There was no core brand that captured the Super Bowl,” he said. “There were all kinds of brands from alcohol to gambling to Jesus.”
Fox also said 15.5 million people watched the season premiere of Gordon Ramsay’s competitive show Next Live Chef after the match. The spot after the Super Bowl is usually the most coveted time on television.
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