The Hollywood Reporter reports that Sunday’s Super Bowl‘s second overtime game drew a record-breaking crowd, the highest in the league’s history of total viewer ratings. This is the largest broadcast by CBS since Nielsen started tracking total viewers. Many known celebrities appearing at the Super Bowl as Usher, who was performing at the halftime show, brought out Alicia Keys, H.E.R, Jermaine Dupri, Will.I.Am, Lil Jon and Ludacris.
With an average viewership of 120 million, the Kansas City Chiefs’ 25-22 victory over the San Francisco 49ers on CBS was the largest telecast in history. The total was increased to 123.4 million by simulcasts on Nickelodeon, Univision, Paramount+, and other digital platforms. According to Nielsen, no other TV program in American history has attracted as many viewers as this one.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that CBS claims the Super Bowl was the most streamed ever; since both networks were using the same feed, the 120 million viewers for the CBS telecast includes the audience from Paramount+. With a record-breaking 2.2 million viewers on average for its Spanish-language Super Bowl broadcast, Univision outperformed Nickelodeon with its SpongeBob-themed alternate telecast, which drew 1.2 million viewers.
Time zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen for the linear telecasts and Adobe Analytics numbers for the streaming are the basis for the 123.4 million viewers. On February 13, the final figures and demographic breakdowns will be made available.
The number of viewers for Super Bowl LVIII increased by 7% over the previous year’s event, which brought in 115.1 million on Fox (updated from 113.1 million nearly three months later). That was, at least officially, the most watched broadcast in American television history up until Sunday. Although every Super Bowl from 2013 to 2016 averaged over 111 million viewers, it’s possible that a few previous games would have surpassed that total if out-of-home viewing had been taken into account. Nielsen did not include out-of-home ratings in its totals until 2021.
In retrospect, viewership estimates for the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing on ABC, CBS, and NBC ranged from 125 million to 150 million, with the highest estimate representing nearly three-quarters of the country’s total population at the time (though keep in mind, those are estimates, not official counts). With 60.2% of all TV homes watching the M*A*S*H finale in February 1983, it continues to hold the record for the highest household rating.