Newsflash: Americans love dogs. Double newsflash: Americans even love watching dogs on their TVs.
A decades-long tradition, the Puppy Bowl aired Sunday afternoon across Animal Planet, Discovery, TBS, truTV, HBO Max, and Discovery+ in the lead-up to Super Bowl LX on NBC later that evening. And Puppy Bowl XXII, as the 22nd edition was officially dubbed, set an eight-year viewership high.
The program drew a whopping 15.3 million viewers across the aforementioned channels and platforms at 2 p.m. ET on Sunday. It’s the show’s best audience since 2018 and an increase of 20% versus last year’s iteration.
“This year’s Puppy Bowl delivered its strongest performance in nearly a decade, and its success across linear and streaming highlights our unique ability to unite audiences around content that feels good and does good,” Joseph Boyle, head of content for Discovery Channel, told Variety in a statement. “We’re grateful to bring viewers so much joy and are deeply proud of the purpose at the heart of this event.”
It is quite incredible to compare the Puppy Bowl’s viewership to other non-Super Bowl sporting events that happened over the weekend. For instance, the most-watched live sporting event other than the Super Bowl was the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open, which averaged 3.78 million viewers Sunday afternoon on CBS. The Puppy Bowl drew over four-times the audience of that popular PGA Tour event. Similarly, cute dogs on television beat out the best rivalry in college basketball, Duke and North Carolina, which averaged 3.51 million viewers on ESPN on Saturday night. The NBA was no competition either, averaging 2.47 million viewers for Warriors-Lakers and 2.46 million viewers for Celtics-Knicks over the weekend.
For many Americans, there are few Super Bowl Sunday traditions quite like the Puppy Bowl it seems. Heck, it’s potentially the only programming still keeping Animal Planet in business.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.