Every year, without fail, the Super Bowl is the most-watched television event in the country.
And frankly, nothing else comes close.
Perhaps the only events in the same ballpark are the NFL’s conference championship games, which tend to get less than half a Super Bowl audience. Or even beyond sports with major political events like a presidential debate, where viewership is combined across a dozen different networks and still doesn’t compare to audiences for the Big Game.
In recent years, Super Bowl audiences have only gotten bigger. Last year’s game between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs set an all-time record with 123.7 million viewers across CBS, Univision, Nickelodeon, and Paramount’s digital platforms.
At least, it was a record, according to CBS.
According to data from Sports Media Watch, last year’s game actually ranks second all-time in Super Bowl viewing behind Super Bowl LI — the infamous 28-3 game between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons — when accounting for all of the viewership measurements currently rolled into the total audience number. That game clocked in at 126.3 million viewers when using our modern standards, about three million more than last year’s game.
Nielsen, the viewership measurement company used across the industry, has significantly changed its methodology in recent years to capture previously unaccounted audiences.
Since 2020, Nielsen has begun including out-of-home viewing measurements in its final viewership tally. The system is designed to capture viewers who watch in non-traditional settings like bars, restaurants, and hotels.
As one would expect, that type of viewing is quite prevalent for an event like the Super Bowl, where many people watch the game in settings outside their homes.
Nielsen began measuring out-of-home audiences for the Super Bowl in 2017, during the aforementioned Patriots-Falcons game, though it kept the tally separate from its final total. Aside from the COVID-impacted Super Bowl in 2021, when pandemic behavior changed how people watched the game, out-of-home viewing has added between 21 and 27 million viewers annually, generally around 20% of the total audience.
These changes, of course, make comparisons to old Super Bowl viewership figures difficult.
However, they have also made the total audience figure much higher in recent years than under Nielsen’s old methodology.
That will be especially true this year. Nielsen recently announced an expansion of its out-of-home viewing measurements. Previously, the company sampled only two-thirds of the country, but it has now expanded to cover 100% of the country.
But out-of-home viewing is not the only thing driving up Super Bowl viewership in recent years.
Another factor increasing recent Super Bowl audiences is the use of simulcasts. Before 2014, only the main English-language network airing the Super Bowl was included in the audience total. Since then, Spanish-language viewership has been added, further boosting the audience. And now, even more simulcasts are included, like last year’s Nickelodeon broadcast. Each simulcast chips in just a bit more additional viewership that can help networks set a record.
This year, Fox is taking full advantage of simulcasts to boost its final viewership figure. In addition to watching the game on Fox, viewers can tune in on Telemundo, Fox Deportes, the Fox Sports App, or the network’s free ad-supported television platform, Tubi.
Nielsen will measure all of these in some form or fashion and include them in the final figure.
Before considering the quality of this year’s Super Bowl matchup, Fox is positioning itself to set a viewership record based solely on Nielsen’s methodological changes and its use of numerous simulcasts.
But considering that this year’s Super Bowl will feature the league’s most popular team, the Kansas City Chiefs, and two of its most popular players, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, it becomes difficult to see how the network doesn’t set a record.
Much has been said about so-called “Chiefs fatigue” recently, but this postseason’s viewership figures indicate the exact opposite. In fact, out of the 12 postseason games so far this season, just three have seen year-over-year viewership increases. Two of those three games featured the Chiefs (who have only played two games this postseason).
Dynasties (or emerging dynasties) tend to outperform other matchups in championship games. One only needs to look at how well Steph’s Warriors or LeBron’s Heat teams rated compared to the NBA’s recent randomly generated Finals matchups to see this.
It’s much easier for casual fans to watch a game with a storyline they’re already familiar with than one that’s brand new. The Chiefs offer a familiar story and familiar characters, which will draw in the casual fan.
Some ancillary factors will also help Super Bowl LIX set a record.
Philadelphia is a large media market, and people will remember the Super Bowl between these teams two years ago. Kendrick Lamar, the halftime performer, is coming off a huge Grammy performance and is one of the most popular artists in the country right now. Fox’s Tom Brady will be in the booth calling his first Super Bowl. There are plenty of storylines to go around.
So, let’s take the totality of this reasoning and boil it down to a single number.
The official Awful Announcing Super Bowl LIX viewership prediction is 128 million.
