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The Feb. 11 Super Bowl game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers drew an average of 123.4 million viewers, the largest number of people watching the same broadcast in television history.
112 million of those viewers tuned in to the CBS broadcast, the largest audience ever recorded for a single network. The remainder was measured across Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, CBS Sports and NFL digital properties, including NFL+. According to Paramount Global, Paramount+ saw record viewership making Sunday the most-streamed Super Bowl in history, but exact data on streaming views is not available.
Before this, the biggest telecast of all time was last year’s Super Bowl game between the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. It was initially named the third most watched, behind the 2015 and 2017 Super Bowls, which drew 114.4 million and 113.7 million viewers, respectively. But Nielsen later detected errors in its measurements that raised the figure from 113 million to a record 115.1 million viewers. Sunday’s game improved that number by 7%.
These figures, combined from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, represent the average number of viewers who tuned in at any given time during each game, but Nielsen calculates the number of people who watched any share of television broadcasting with 202.4 million, 10% more than last year’s 184 million.
The game took place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada. Kickoff was at 3:30 pm PT/6:30 pm ET following a half-hour block of entertainment led by Reba McEntire’s performance of the National Anthem. The halftime performance was headlined by Usher, who featured A-list guests including Alicia Keys, HER, Will.i.am, Lil John, Ludacris and Jermaine Dupri.
As always, the Super Bowl was accompanied by a slew of celebrity-filled ads. Among them, a Verizon ad featuring Beyoncé and Tony Hale stood out on Sunday night, which the former used to announce “Renaissance Act II,” a country album that will follow 2022’s “Renaissance” and will be released on December 29. March.
In addition to football, music and commercials, there was another potential audience draw: Taylor Swift. For months, a media frenzy has followed the pop star’s relationship with Chiefs player Travis Kelce and his appearances at her games, and while some data suggests Swift’s attendance has boosted the show’s ratings, NFL, others are less clear. (Consumer research firm Numerator concluded from a snap poll that 20% of Super Bowl viewers were rooting for the Chiefs because of Swift.) Regardless, hordes of fans were glued to their screens when Swift entered the arena alongside Blake Lively and Ice Spice and when he kissed Kelce at the end of the game to celebrate the Chiefs’ victory.