The Super Bowl delivered its usual massive audience on Sunday — one that was a little bit larger than last year.
Fox’s broadcast of the big game averaged 113.1 million viewers across all platforms. That’s a slight, 1 percent improvement over Super Bowl LVI a year ago and a six-year high for the game. Final Nielsen ratings put the on-air telecast at 112.17 million viewers, with Fox Deportes contributing 882,000 more.
NBC sports reported 112.3 million viewers across all platforms last year, but using different metrics for streaming than in the past. The network broadcast averaged 99.18 million viewers, and 1.9 million people watched Telemundo’s Spanish telecast. NBC Sports said 11.2 million people watched via streaming or digital platforms, while prior years had measured the number of devices in use during the game. NBC counted 6 million devices streaming; Fox is citing an improvement on that figure to 7 million on Sunday. Given the high likelihood that more that one person was watching at least some of those 7 million streams, the true audience for Super Bowl LVII is somewhere above 113 million.
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A more detailed breakdown of Sunday’s on-air audience, Spanish-language viewing on Fox Deportes and streaming figures will be available early Tuesday.
Viewing peaked with Rihanna’s halftime performance, which averaged 118.7 million viewers and was the second-most-watched halftime show on record (behind the Katy Perry/Left Shark spectacle of 2015), Fox says.
As usual, Super Bowl LVII is only competing with past Super Bowls in terms of ratings comparisons. The space between it and the second-most-watched primetime show of the 2022-23 season — CBS’ telecast of the NFL’s AFC Championship game on Jan. 29 — is almost 60 million viewers.
The home markets for both teams were both hugely invested in the Super Bowl (unsurprisingly). Household ratings showed Kansas City recording a 52.0 rating/87 share and Philadelphia at 46.3/77, meaning more than three quarters of all homes watching TV in both cities during the Super Bowl were tuned to the game. Nationally, the game scored a 40.0 rating/77 share.
After the game, the second-season premiere of Next Level Chef — which started at 10:37 p.m. ET/7:37 p.m. PT — averaged 15.66 million viewers, the best mark of the 2022-23 season for non-sports programming in primetime but a low for a show airing immediately after the Super Bowl. The previous low came way back in 1975, when NBC’s nightly newscast had 15.92 million viewers. For entertainment programming, the previous low was 17.36 million viewers for an episode of Alias on ABC in 2003.
NBC drew 21.28 million viewers a year ago for Winter Olympics coverage as its post-game programming. The last time Fox had the Super Bowl, in 2020, The Masked Singer brought in 23.73 million same-day viewers.
Next Level Chef also scored a 5.0 rating among adults 18-49, also the best number of the season for non-sports primetime programming.
Feb. 14, 9:40 a.m. Updated with final ratings from Sunday.
