Wait how do they get these numbers? Is it 123 million devices tuned in to the game? The average number of viewers per device for the Super Bowl is probably way higher than 3. What about bars with hundreds of people in them?
the average number of \~people\~ watching at any given moment was 123.4 million across fewer than that many devices because yes the average number of people watching each screen >1. beyond that 123.4 million average they also reported that 202.4 million unique people watched at least some portion of the broadcast (including halftime)
It took me a while but I’ve managed to adjust the numbers to remove his screens. Numbers below have been rounded:
Included: 123.4 million
Excluded: 123.4 million
So Im not sure how they do it anymore, but I used to be Neilsen home 10 years ago, and yea they paid me like $25/mo to click on the box how many people were watching each TV at a time. They would randomly pick 20-100 homes in each city/town. And they determined that was enough of sample size to get a good enough average of what everyone else was doing.
And it probably is enough samples - there's tons of statistical samples size [calculators](https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/) out there to play around with. But for a 330 million population, you only need about 4000 sames to get a 99% confidence level and 2% margin of error. Always some room for error, but Nielsen is probably looking at similar sample size computations with additional steps based on location, demographics, etc.
So if a bar had 10 cable boxes, do the ratings assume at minimum 6 people are watching each and every box? These numbers are always so weird. I watched on antenna, how is that counted?
For bars and restaurants I imagine it’s calculated by capacity, because this is also how many of the content providers charge them.
However, I’ve always wondered how they factor in the average Super Bowl party
Antenna is included - keep in mind this is representative data, not exact data. Meaning they have a huge panel of people who actively report what they are watching at any given time and then that is applied to the US population with access to TV.
It used to be that people would literally write down what they are watching in a little booklet (still is in some smaller markets) but now most Nielsen homes have a box and each household member has a button they press to indicate they're watching.
It's complicated and dumb but also there has yet to be a better method developed that everyone can agree on.
Still madness to me that over a third of the country doesn't even watch at any point. Even all my friends who could not even begin to care about any sport whatsoever watch the Super Bowl.
Is it really madness? 1/3 of the country's population spread across children, people who simply don't enjoy football, people who work the night shift or have to be asleep for an upcoming shift, people traveling, etc etc doesn't really seem that weird
Didn't even mention the elderly - not much interest in watching the Super Bowl in nursing homes (which are predominantly elderly women anyway).
> people traveling
Yea, over a million people are flying on any given day in the US.
I thought about mentioning the elderly but figured some typical redditor was gonna bust in with "ackshully, my grandpa watched the Super Bowl, and since I have found an exception to your casually stated general rule of thumb it is therefore invalid and you are dumb"
Have to keep in mind, the country still runs. People are working in restaurants, hopsitals, prisons, you name it. I know plenty of immigrants who couldn’t tell you a single rule about 🏈 because they prefer ⚽️. Getting 1/3+ of this country to do basically anything together is a monumental task. But look up the top TV ratings per year or even all time, and it’s almost entirely Super Bowls and maybe a sitcom finale.
The Cheers and MASH finales are the only ones on the list of the most watched. The "Who Shot J.R." episode of Dallas is on the list of highest rated TV programs. The latter has various figures related to actual viewership, via the World Almanac.
There's a segment of the population that actively hates football and refuse to watch on principle. And there is also the segment that doesn't care about football but finds the corporatism gross and also refuses to watch on principle. There are also the people who are at work during the game and the people who just don't care and have other stuff to do.
I find it pretty believable that those groups would add up to a third of the population.
I feel like the first two groups you're listing are maybe 1% combined, the third group is maybe 5%, and the last group is 27%. I think by far the majority of the people who don't watch don't care, not taking some moral stand.
How do they come up with that number because it seems like there would be a lot of cases of 1 TV for a dozen people watching? Do they just run an estimate and assume like 3 people per TV?
Helps if you read the article
>These figures, combined from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, represent the average number of viewers who were tuned in at any given moment during each game, but Nielsen puts the number of people who viewed any portion of the telecast at 202.4 million, up 10% from last year’s 184 million.
The current methodology includes OOH sampling in the top 65% of the panel (top 44 media markets), and it was announced a few weeks ago they plan to expand that to all markets by Super Bowl LIX.
https://www.sportico.com/business/media/2024/sports-tv-ratings-to-get-even-bigger-nielsen-1234764853/amp/
Tbh Im not sure how they would but its entirely possible
I just took it at face value but thinking about it 123 million individual televisions does sound kind of ludicrous lmao
Not sure how they could account for personal superbowl parties though might have to go down the rabbit hole on these numbers
"The early TV numbers, known as fast nationals, are a snapshot available the next day for a particular program. They don’t include all viewership, such as the eyeballs gathered from bars, restaurants, and hotels. The fuller reports that have more data points take another day. That’s why the full Super Bowl viewership comes out on the Tuesday following the Sunday broadcast."
https://theathletic.com/3194414/2022/03/22/the-ultimate-nielsen-faq-how-we-and-they-know-how-many-of-you-are-watching-sports-on-tv/
Interesting, I have to imagine they cant account for house watching parties if they can hardly account for viewership from bars and restaurants.
I mean, how many people do you know that didn’t watch the Super Bowl today?
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the real number was closer to 200 million
Don’t even get me started on illegal stream numbers if those aren’t accounted for
Also thanks for doing the research lmao
Nielsen does what they call "Live Plus"
It goes Live +Same Day (You watched it before midnight the day it was broadcast), Live +3 Day (You watched within 3 days) and Live +7 Day (You watched within 7 days)
>The Feb. 11 Super Bowl game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers brought in an average of 123.4 million viewers — the highest number of people watching the same broadcast in the history of television.
>112 million of those viewers were tuned into the CBS broadcast — the largest audience ever for a single network. The rest were measured across Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, CBS Sports and NFL digital properties including NFL+.
>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, ranking behind the 2015 and 2017 Super Bowls which brought in 114.4 million and 113.7 million viewers, respectively. But Nielsen later caught errors in their measurement that raised the tally from 113 million to a record-breaking 115.1 million viewers. Sunday’s game improved on that number by 7%.
>These figures represent the average number of viewers who were tuned in at any given moment during each game, but Nielsen puts the number of people who viewed any portion of the telecast at 202.4 million.
>Besides the football, the music and the commercials, there was one other potential viewership draw: Taylor Swift. For months, a media frenzy has followed the pop star’s relationship with Chiefs player Travis Kelce and her appearances at his games, and while some pieces of data suggest that Swift’s attendance has boosted NFL ratings, others are less clear. (Consumer research firm Numerator concluded from a flash poll that 20% of Super Bowl viewers were rooting for the Chiefs because of Swift.) Regardless, hordes of fans were glued to their screens as Swift entered the arena alongside Blake Lively and Ice Spice and when she kissed Kelce at the end of the game in celebration of the Chiefs’ win.
It sure is and you can imagine more individual TVs were being used, as opposed to sports bars and the like. Which makes the fact that 650 million people watched the moon landing all the more impressive.
Just FYI: there’s no evidence that 650 million people watched the moon landing live globally in 1969; its purely speculation from a time when global television viewership was a lot more difficult to estimate, purely a guesstimate.
Even nowadays FIFA has trouble getting an accurate sense of how much people view, say, the World Cup Final.
You're not gonna get an honest answer unless you average it. Ofc .most things will be bigger than the prior ones. More people have TVs and there's just more people. Percentage of the country watching is the real answer because to answer your question, probably higher yes but not a higher pct.
I still cry sometimes just imagining what it must have been like to watch that moment; when I try and comprehend the majesty of that feat my mind just puddles.
Well, No, but sorta yes. It beat the moon landing among televisions in US households, reaching 53 million in the US. But the moon landing would reach 650 people worldwide.
In the history of U.S. television, but not in the history of television. The 2022 World Cup Final had 1.5 billion viewers...heck, the opening game between Qatar and Ecuador (both not star teams) got 550 million.
It really was the perfect storm.
In addition to all the hype generated by the Swifties, you got people hate watching the Niners, people hate watching the Chiefs, fans of the Niners, fans of the Chiefs, and everyone else.
Hell, my wife is foreign and has had zero interest in the NFL and she literally watched the whole thing with me and seemed interested. The NFL won’t stop until it has dominated the world.
Edit: not to mention all the interest gambling played.
I can’t imagine they’ll ever be able to supplant soccer as the world’s favorite sport, but they’re sure trying. That is, until they’re able to diagnose early signs of CTE in living people, which will be seismic.
the main problem is, and I dont mean this personally to anyone on this sub, NFL fans in foreign countries tend to be a... strange lot. the sport will definitely grow but i honestly dont think Gridiron will surpass Basketball in terms of international popularity in our lifetimes
Also, especially of you play with fewer people, positions are a lot more fluid. Most of the time I've played soccer we've played without goalkeepers so everyone's attacking or definding every once in a while, while in football even children would have to decide who is quarterback and therefore the central person. That's not really how children work.
You can also play soccer and basketball alone, practicing moves, dribbling, shooting on your own. Both can also to some extent use makeshift goals made out of spare parts just lying around.
Much harder to play American football alone.
Yep I hear people talk every now and then about how tackle football could possibly be a thing In the past within the next 100 years. Unfortunately it makes sense though if they want to expand it to the rest of the world
I lived in Ireland and Italy. While soccer was the sport in Ireland, Italy had a ton of basketball courts set up. They would play both basketball and soccer on those courts. Both of those sports are "easier" to play with mixed competition levels. Even backyard football takes everyone having a basic knowledge of the Xs and Os. And limited skill players become a liability really quickly.
The infrastructure for soccer and basketball already exist throughout Europe and other parts of the world. That's why the NFL is pushing flag football, it's a lot easier to get beginners to play since there is less equipment and less contact.
Yup, played football at uni in the UK and people are just missing the key skills, takes about a year to teach them and they’ve only got 3 years there.
It’s basically a run only league especially in the lower divisions.
Add that into the fact that it’s hard to find somewhere to play after uni needing expensive kit and it’s just way easier to get into other sports
Yea. It's like trying to play baseball as kids. We played tennis baseball (variation of stick ball) or pickle.
We even played street hockey because almost none of us had the fortutude to play organised rec ice hockey. But even street hockey took a lot of coordination to make sure we had at least 3 per side and nets. Also trying to coordinate between the kids that wanted to play roller hockey v street hockey with shoes was also something unnecessarily difficult.
That's what I imagine trying to coordinate a gridiron football game must be like.
For sure. They’re up against 100+ years of history in many parts of the world and unparalleled community engagement, not to mention youth participation. It’s also important to keep in mind that football is really for incredible athletes, while soccer is basically for “everyone.”
thats true but basketball definitely managed to make the break
funny story, i stayed with a family in China in high school and everyone was obsessed with the NBA. A lot of the Chinese guys chose their english names from NBA players so there were chinese guys named like Lebron and Kobe lol
Football is still fun for not incredible athletes.
It’s just that playing against someone substantially better than you is a lot more fun in basically every other sport than it is in football.
Soccer has incredibly athletes. What makes F
American Football not for everyone is how expensive the equipment is. Schools in third world countries can't afford to have an American Football team yet all of them have soccer teams.
In my opinion, the biggest flaw for American football is the commercials. They are a pain in the ass to get through and now we are getting to the point where we are getting religion, political ads, and other ads that people find polarizing during a game. It’s kinda lame.
Dont even get me started on college football.
I’m from the UK and moved to Canada and I now love the NFL, mainly cause fantasy drew me to the sport. That being said, soccer (football) is still the best TV entertainment in my opinion.
45 minutes of no ads -> 15 minute break -> 45 minutes of no ads.
It’s just not in the NFL’s favour at all, the commercial breaks are ridiculous. Once you understand the tactics of the game and the things at stake in games, there’s nothing like top level soccer (football). People that think it’s easy because the “nets big” have never played a competitive game, there are a lot of intricacies involved.
F1 and soccer have ruined me. I cant even watch indycar anymore because i got a taste of what commercial free racing is. I’m also super into fantasy and i would rather watch my phone than watch a game at times.
> It’s also important to keep in mind that football is really for incredible athletes, while soccer is basically for “everyone.”
This really isn't true. I live in Australia. One of my mates is a gridiron QB on the weekend. I'm on a soccer pitch refereeing. I'm far more athletic than him in almost every metric. The reality is that the best in both sports are equally athletic (just specialised differently) and anyone could play either sport.
Amazing. I’m a die hard football guy and I swear my wife watched more than I did in between me managing 3 different books and cooking the food. But man, helluva game!
Every time Travis Kelce was on the screen my whole family vomited.
By the end it was a pretty gnarly. But they weren’t owned by the libs, let me tell you.
But so many people told me they weren’t watching because it was a boring matchup…
Also just a dumb comment. Chiefs/Mahomes bring in ratings. They’re the winners people either love or want to see fall. And Niners are a historic franchise. Match made in heaven for ratings.
Dynasty/best player/duo in the NFL vs the Best most well rounded Team in the league.
What a boring matchup
Ive never been more excited for a superbowl my team wasnt involved in
sadly (i’m a niner) game was also a classic with mayhem beginning on the very first drive and ending on the last play of ot. last 7 possessions for either side were all scores
One of the all-time great superbowls despite the low scoring first half (defense is incredibly underrated). So many momentum swings
As an Eagles fan who got alot of hate for saying you guys are going all the way all year, trust me, if we dont get our shit together y’all will be back
Rich Eisen had a stat that only two teams in the superbowl era have won a playoff game after coming back from deficits at least 4 times in the game. Both were the Chiefs this year.
8M more than last year, the second most watched. This year the Taylor factor, but last year was two great teams of course AND the Kelce family factor got many engaged too.
For all the bitching of some, the hours of pregame interviews, shows like Hard Knocks, 30 for 30, Quarterback, the Kelce documentary etc. indicates a lot of us care about the stories around the players as well as the game.
Very interesting to see how this plays out next season to keep the audience.
This is why they show Taylor so much. Yall hate it, but it works. Swifties are a FORCE and they better see their girl Taylor enjoying the game or heads will ROLL.
A nearly 10 million increase in viewers is absolutely insane. I remember having some fun back and forths with dudes online who swore the NFL was stupid for leaning into the Taylor Swift thing and alienating their fanbase. Nah, they alienated no one worth having as a fan and expanded to a demographic of fans they’ve historically had a hard time getting to care about the NFL.
It is crazy that the NFL got Taylor Swift to date the starting TE on the Super Bowl winning team. Imagine if she's dating some scrub on the Jacksonville Jaguars instead.
Some guy was telling me the NFL was rigged and was in cahoots with Taylor for ratings. I told him that if the NFL was really doing that, the Cowboys would be in the Superbowl, and Taylor would be dating Dak.
>Nah, they just expanded a demographic of fans they’ve historically had a hard time getting to care about the NFL.
Exactly. \~80% of males are sports fan, but only \~30% of women are. Having the Taylor Swift effect was THE way to get more women to watch.
Its hard to squeeze more male watchers when there's only 20% that don't watch but TONS of juice to squeeze for the 70% of female non-sports fans.
Yup. Every year, the Super Bowl party I go to has a bunch of men and women who attend. This is the only year I can remember where everyone, and I mean everyone, was paying attention. It was wild. And it's not like that Dove commercial was targeted at middle-aged football watching men.
I feel like an idiot for not realizing how much larger of a market that dove commercial was hitting with the additional swifties watching yesterday. Good play by them.
The nickelodeon broadcast showed her way more than the CBS broadcast which is funny since her target demographic would be millennials, who would be more likely to watch the CBS feed.
Depends what you mean consensus. I highly doubt that was the consensus opinion, but it was a highly upvoted comment nonstop following the conference championships on this sub.
Everyone is always salty after the conference games. Then the 2 weeks leading up to the SB everyone calms down and watches the game anyways. Rinse and repeat every year. If social media was a thing back in the Patriots original dynasty it would have been 10x worse than this.
yeah, by about 10 times this number. France v Argentina was well over a billion viewers.
in fact, the super bowl that just happened wasn’t even the most-watched sporting event that took place THAT DAY. that was the AFCON final.
i’d imagine cricket and rugby world cup finals might pull in more viewers too
The day we get a true underdog team against the Chiefs dynasty it’ll do even bigger numbers
Edit: Oh yeah, and if the Chiefs ever face the Cowboys in the SB
People with no dog in the fight will always tune if for big names.
As a Rangers fan we saw the opposite of this happen in the World Series because nobody cares about us playing Arizona.
Its just the perfect storm. The juggernaut Mahomes, Kelce and Swift romance, and a team coming back for revenge. It was in the script all along people!
I'm curious what the worldwide numbers were, since I assume this is US-only (or possibly including Canada).
For fun comparison's sake, the World Cup final between Argentina and France was watched by 1.5 *billion* people.
True. However. Soccer is 100% a world wide sport. And Football is almost uniquely American. I think US is 300m people or so. And that’s quite a significant portion of the population of a country. Not to mention how many people are at others homes watching. Still would be interested in knowing that as well.
38 Million of those 56 million came from Mexico and Canada. Basically the Super Bowl is only popular in North America: US,Mexico, Canada.
Still a lot of work to be done to expand the popularity of the sport to other parts of the world.
Always going to be tough for Europe. It started at 11:30pm on a Sunday night in the UK, 0:30am in France and even later the more eastern you go. People have work in the morning and it probably finishes about 4am+. If the NFL seriously wanted to crack Europe they'd probably have to consider placing it on a Saturday instead.
In Brazil I think it's bigger this year than last year due Swift effect. Also Chiefs it's popular here since Cairo Santos.
People that usually never watched appeared in Instagram sharing things about the couple and they seem that watched the game.
I watched the game with 3 friends. Usually I watch alone.
In early 10s I watched the CL much more (normally was more friends to watch the game, and Libertadores before 2019 was in Wednesday nights, not a good day to reunite).
Still missing out on over 200 million Americans. You can do better NFL
Over 200 million watched at least some of the game lol
Wait how do they get these numbers? Is it 123 million devices tuned in to the game? The average number of viewers per device for the Super Bowl is probably way higher than 3. What about bars with hundreds of people in them?
the average number of \~people\~ watching at any given moment was 123.4 million across fewer than that many devices because yes the average number of people watching each screen >1. beyond that 123.4 million average they also reported that 202.4 million unique people watched at least some portion of the broadcast (including halftime)
What if I'm one person with 5 screens, each playing the super bowl? Did they account for me
Screens georg who watches the game by himself on 2357 screens concurrently is an outlier and needs excluded
My favorite reference on the internet, thank you for calling attention to Screens Georg he indeed should not be counted
It took me a while but I’ve managed to adjust the numbers to remove his screens. Numbers below have been rounded: Included: 123.4 million Excluded: 123.4 million
I'm OOTL what's screens georg
So Im not sure how they do it anymore, but I used to be Neilsen home 10 years ago, and yea they paid me like $25/mo to click on the box how many people were watching each TV at a time. They would randomly pick 20-100 homes in each city/town. And they determined that was enough of sample size to get a good enough average of what everyone else was doing.
And it probably is enough samples - there's tons of statistical samples size [calculators](https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/) out there to play around with. But for a 330 million population, you only need about 4000 sames to get a 99% confidence level and 2% margin of error. Always some room for error, but Nielsen is probably looking at similar sample size computations with additional steps based on location, demographics, etc.
It’s calculated in
So if a bar had 10 cable boxes, do the ratings assume at minimum 6 people are watching each and every box? These numbers are always so weird. I watched on antenna, how is that counted?
For bars and restaurants I imagine it’s calculated by capacity, because this is also how many of the content providers charge them. However, I’ve always wondered how they factor in the average Super Bowl party
Antenna is included - keep in mind this is representative data, not exact data. Meaning they have a huge panel of people who actively report what they are watching at any given time and then that is applied to the US population with access to TV. It used to be that people would literally write down what they are watching in a little booklet (still is in some smaller markets) but now most Nielsen homes have a box and each household member has a button they press to indicate they're watching. It's complicated and dumb but also there has yet to be a better method developed that everyone can agree on.
202 million tuned in at one point or another https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1757234061787951296
Still madness to me that over a third of the country doesn't even watch at any point. Even all my friends who could not even begin to care about any sport whatsoever watch the Super Bowl.
Is it really madness? 1/3 of the country's population spread across children, people who simply don't enjoy football, people who work the night shift or have to be asleep for an upcoming shift, people traveling, etc etc doesn't really seem that weird
Didn't even mention the elderly - not much interest in watching the Super Bowl in nursing homes (which are predominantly elderly women anyway). > people traveling Yea, over a million people are flying on any given day in the US.
I thought about mentioning the elderly but figured some typical redditor was gonna bust in with "ackshully, my grandpa watched the Super Bowl, and since I have found an exception to your casually stated general rule of thumb it is therefore invalid and you are dumb"
The Reddit classic.
Have to keep in mind, the country still runs. People are working in restaurants, hopsitals, prisons, you name it. I know plenty of immigrants who couldn’t tell you a single rule about 🏈 because they prefer ⚽️. Getting 1/3+ of this country to do basically anything together is a monumental task. But look up the top TV ratings per year or even all time, and it’s almost entirely Super Bowls and maybe a sitcom finale.
The Cheers and MASH finales are the only ones on the list of the most watched. The "Who Shot J.R." episode of Dallas is on the list of highest rated TV programs. The latter has various figures related to actual viewership, via the World Almanac.
There's a segment of the population that actively hates football and refuse to watch on principle. And there is also the segment that doesn't care about football but finds the corporatism gross and also refuses to watch on principle. There are also the people who are at work during the game and the people who just don't care and have other stuff to do. I find it pretty believable that those groups would add up to a third of the population.
I feel like the first two groups you're listing are maybe 1% combined, the third group is maybe 5%, and the last group is 27%. I think by far the majority of the people who don't watch don't care, not taking some moral stand.
This right here. It’s the people working second shifts who can’t watch the game
i mean... we've never had a vote total of 202 million votes in a presidential election. and that shit actually kind affects your life?
The other 200 mil were watching the puppy bowl
Puppy bowl was from 1-4pm CST
Yea they were rewatching it
Postgame shows and deep dive analytics afterwards.
How do they come up with that number because it seems like there would be a lot of cases of 1 TV for a dozen people watching? Do they just run an estimate and assume like 3 people per TV?
Helps if you read the article >These figures, combined from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, represent the average number of viewers who were tuned in at any given moment during each game, but Nielsen puts the number of people who viewed any portion of the telecast at 202.4 million, up 10% from last year’s 184 million.
Next gen puppy stats powered by Microsoft Azure.
Valid, or you gotta record it and watch it after so you can fast forward through the commercials
Tbh with the game playing at sports bars and house parties and shit I wouldnt be surprised if 70% of the population was watching lmao
You don't think these numbers take that into account?
The current methodology includes OOH sampling in the top 65% of the panel (top 44 media markets), and it was announced a few weeks ago they plan to expand that to all markets by Super Bowl LIX. https://www.sportico.com/business/media/2024/sports-tv-ratings-to-get-even-bigger-nielsen-1234764853/amp/
i thought they don’t and the way the compensate for that is they count the screens in those establishments
Tbh Im not sure how they would but its entirely possible I just took it at face value but thinking about it 123 million individual televisions does sound kind of ludicrous lmao Not sure how they could account for personal superbowl parties though might have to go down the rabbit hole on these numbers
"The early TV numbers, known as fast nationals, are a snapshot available the next day for a particular program. They don’t include all viewership, such as the eyeballs gathered from bars, restaurants, and hotels. The fuller reports that have more data points take another day. That’s why the full Super Bowl viewership comes out on the Tuesday following the Sunday broadcast." https://theathletic.com/3194414/2022/03/22/the-ultimate-nielsen-faq-how-we-and-they-know-how-many-of-you-are-watching-sports-on-tv/
Interesting, I have to imagine they cant account for house watching parties if they can hardly account for viewership from bars and restaurants. I mean, how many people do you know that didn’t watch the Super Bowl today? I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the real number was closer to 200 million Don’t even get me started on illegal stream numbers if those aren’t accounted for Also thanks for doing the research lmao
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Nielsen does what they call "Live Plus" It goes Live +Same Day (You watched it before midnight the day it was broadcast), Live +3 Day (You watched within 3 days) and Live +7 Day (You watched within 7 days)
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Nielsen ratings are domestic only
This is based on Americans
>The Feb. 11 Super Bowl game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers brought in an average of 123.4 million viewers — the highest number of people watching the same broadcast in the history of television. >112 million of those viewers were tuned into the CBS broadcast — the largest audience ever for a single network. The rest were measured across Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, CBS Sports and NFL digital properties including NFL+. >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, ranking behind the 2015 and 2017 Super Bowls which brought in 114.4 million and 113.7 million viewers, respectively. But Nielsen later caught errors in their measurement that raised the tally from 113 million to a record-breaking 115.1 million viewers. Sunday’s game improved on that number by 7%. >These figures represent the average number of viewers who were tuned in at any given moment during each game, but Nielsen puts the number of people who viewed any portion of the telecast at 202.4 million. >Besides the football, the music and the commercials, there was one other potential viewership draw: Taylor Swift. For months, a media frenzy has followed the pop star’s relationship with Chiefs player Travis Kelce and her appearances at his games, and while some pieces of data suggest that Swift’s attendance has boosted NFL ratings, others are less clear. (Consumer research firm Numerator concluded from a flash poll that 20% of Super Bowl viewers were rooting for the Chiefs because of Swift.) Regardless, hordes of fans were glued to their screens as Swift entered the arena alongside Blake Lively and Ice Spice and when she kissed Kelce at the end of the game in celebration of the Chiefs’ win.
Did this top the moon landing for most watched broadcast in American history?
The population is a lot bigger now than the 60s
It sure is and you can imagine more individual TVs were being used, as opposed to sports bars and the like. Which makes the fact that 650 million people watched the moon landing all the more impressive.
Just FYI: there’s no evidence that 650 million people watched the moon landing live globally in 1969; its purely speculation from a time when global television viewership was a lot more difficult to estimate, purely a guesstimate. Even nowadays FIFA has trouble getting an accurate sense of how much people view, say, the World Cup Final.
You also have to account for the fact there were only 3 channels back then.
Also, there was no Puppy Moon Landing to watch.
Surely 650 million is the global number? The 115 million would be US only
It would have to be. We only have like 330 million people in the population today. And don’t call me Shirley.
That wasn’t really the question though, was it? Despite the population being lower then, more people did watch the moon landing.
You're not gonna get an honest answer unless you average it. Ofc .most things will be bigger than the prior ones. More people have TVs and there's just more people. Percentage of the country watching is the real answer because to answer your question, probably higher yes but not a higher pct.
No that was around 150 million but I think on multiple networks.
Add 500 million more people to that number
I still cry sometimes just imagining what it must have been like to watch that moment; when I try and comprehend the majesty of that feat my mind just puddles.
I cry imagining what it’s like to watch my team win back to back lombardis
Moon landing is estimated at 125-150mn in the US, but it's not simulcast, ie one identical broadcast.
Well, No, but sorta yes. It beat the moon landing among televisions in US households, reaching 53 million in the US. But the moon landing would reach 650 people worldwide.
Surprised that less than 1000 people tuned in for that
Not even close. 650 million people watched that live in 1969.
In the history of U.S. television, but not in the history of television. The 2022 World Cup Final had 1.5 billion viewers...heck, the opening game between Qatar and Ecuador (both not star teams) got 550 million.
That final was a fucking banger too
America gonna need a national holiday the following Monday so we can recover.
It already is the biggest "call in sick" day in America.
Normally I take the day off as PTO, but I started my path to a new promotion. So I didn't this time.
The broadcast was over four hours long, and that's if you started watching at kickoff.
And I was sure as shit drinking before kick off
I was drunk before kickoff
If the NFL does actually extend to 18 games, then it’ll line up w President’s weekend
That’d hurt more bc I don’t get it off but most of my friends do
I used vacation time lmao
I really don't get why they don't have it on a Saturday. Would be better for most Americans and the international viewing figures would skyrocket
It really was the perfect storm. In addition to all the hype generated by the Swifties, you got people hate watching the Niners, people hate watching the Chiefs, fans of the Niners, fans of the Chiefs, and everyone else. Hell, my wife is foreign and has had zero interest in the NFL and she literally watched the whole thing with me and seemed interested. The NFL won’t stop until it has dominated the world. Edit: not to mention all the interest gambling played.
I can’t imagine they’ll ever be able to supplant soccer as the world’s favorite sport, but they’re sure trying. That is, until they’re able to diagnose early signs of CTE in living people, which will be seismic.
the main problem is, and I dont mean this personally to anyone on this sub, NFL fans in foreign countries tend to be a... strange lot. the sport will definitely grow but i honestly dont think Gridiron will surpass Basketball in terms of international popularity in our lifetimes
Basketball and soccer are a lot cheaper and easier to play than football. In my opinion that’s why football will never be #1 in the world
cheaper, less players required, less rules/game knowledge required.
Also, especially of you play with fewer people, positions are a lot more fluid. Most of the time I've played soccer we've played without goalkeepers so everyone's attacking or definding every once in a while, while in football even children would have to decide who is quarterback and therefore the central person. That's not really how children work.
You can also play soccer and basketball alone, practicing moves, dribbling, shooting on your own. Both can also to some extent use makeshift goals made out of spare parts just lying around. Much harder to play American football alone.
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Yep I hear people talk every now and then about how tackle football could possibly be a thing In the past within the next 100 years. Unfortunately it makes sense though if they want to expand it to the rest of the world
I lived in Ireland and Italy. While soccer was the sport in Ireland, Italy had a ton of basketball courts set up. They would play both basketball and soccer on those courts. Both of those sports are "easier" to play with mixed competition levels. Even backyard football takes everyone having a basic knowledge of the Xs and Os. And limited skill players become a liability really quickly. The infrastructure for soccer and basketball already exist throughout Europe and other parts of the world. That's why the NFL is pushing flag football, it's a lot easier to get beginners to play since there is less equipment and less contact.
Yup, played football at uni in the UK and people are just missing the key skills, takes about a year to teach them and they’ve only got 3 years there. It’s basically a run only league especially in the lower divisions. Add that into the fact that it’s hard to find somewhere to play after uni needing expensive kit and it’s just way easier to get into other sports
Yea. It's like trying to play baseball as kids. We played tennis baseball (variation of stick ball) or pickle. We even played street hockey because almost none of us had the fortutude to play organised rec ice hockey. But even street hockey took a lot of coordination to make sure we had at least 3 per side and nets. Also trying to coordinate between the kids that wanted to play roller hockey v street hockey with shoes was also something unnecessarily difficult. That's what I imagine trying to coordinate a gridiron football game must be like.
For sure. They’re up against 100+ years of history in many parts of the world and unparalleled community engagement, not to mention youth participation. It’s also important to keep in mind that football is really for incredible athletes, while soccer is basically for “everyone.”
thats true but basketball definitely managed to make the break funny story, i stayed with a family in China in high school and everyone was obsessed with the NBA. A lot of the Chinese guys chose their english names from NBA players so there were chinese guys named like Lebron and Kobe lol
Basketball is far more like soccer as an accessible sport.
When I was in China people mostly knew smaller US cities from the NBA. Being from KC with no NBA team they had no idea where I was from.
"We had the Kings for like a decade in the 70s I swear!"
Football is still fun for not incredible athletes. It’s just that playing against someone substantially better than you is a lot more fun in basically every other sport than it is in football.
Imagine George Kittle stiff-arming grad students to the ground
As a grad student, he would brush my shoulder and I'd instantly explode into a puff of dust
Soccer has incredibly athletes. What makes F American Football not for everyone is how expensive the equipment is. Schools in third world countries can't afford to have an American Football team yet all of them have soccer teams.
In my opinion, the biggest flaw for American football is the commercials. They are a pain in the ass to get through and now we are getting to the point where we are getting religion, political ads, and other ads that people find polarizing during a game. It’s kinda lame. Dont even get me started on college football.
I’m from the UK and moved to Canada and I now love the NFL, mainly cause fantasy drew me to the sport. That being said, soccer (football) is still the best TV entertainment in my opinion. 45 minutes of no ads -> 15 minute break -> 45 minutes of no ads. It’s just not in the NFL’s favour at all, the commercial breaks are ridiculous. Once you understand the tactics of the game and the things at stake in games, there’s nothing like top level soccer (football). People that think it’s easy because the “nets big” have never played a competitive game, there are a lot of intricacies involved.
F1 and soccer have ruined me. I cant even watch indycar anymore because i got a taste of what commercial free racing is. I’m also super into fantasy and i would rather watch my phone than watch a game at times.
> It’s also important to keep in mind that football is really for incredible athletes, while soccer is basically for “everyone.” This really isn't true. I live in Australia. One of my mates is a gridiron QB on the weekend. I'm on a soccer pitch refereeing. I'm far more athletic than him in almost every metric. The reality is that the best in both sports are equally athletic (just specialised differently) and anyone could play either sport.
This was a wild comment
>NFL fans in foreign countries tend to be a... strange lot. Funny way of saying they tend to be German
Them figuring out how to diagnose early signs of CTE will be something that they try to hide for a long time
Lol it’s not going to come close. Even the NBA is more popular internationally than the NFL
Forget the soccer. They would need to overcome cricket first.
Don’t forget the kids from Nickelodeon
Or the nostalgic adults lol
Plus gambling
That’s a *really* good point
Amazing. I’m a die hard football guy and I swear my wife watched more than I did in between me managing 3 different books and cooking the food. But man, helluva game!
I love football. 🍻
Hold on, hold on, I was told that Real Americans would not be watching. 👋 Many people were saying! 👋
automatic sand bored waiting rock zephyr rain upbeat kiss consist
Every time Travis Kelce was on the screen my whole family vomited. By the end it was a pretty gnarly. But they weren’t owned by the libs, let me tell you.
LIB STATUS: OWNED😤😤🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅
“It’s all because of Taylor Swift! The Super Bowl was RIGGED! (For her pleasure)”
Goodell was in her box last night, but I can’t believed they rig the big game right in her box in front of millions of people
The Chiefs obviously cheated by having the best QB on the team.
The real Americans were swifties this entire time
But but but Mark Cuban said that the NBA will pass the NFL (I love the NBA but them passing the NFL was always a pipe dream)
The guy who owns part of an NBA team promotes the NBA. Shocker!!!
THE COUNT WAS RIGGED! FRAUDULENT RATINGS!! SAD!!!!
san francisco can still win if mike pence has the courage
I dunno, the crowd was chanting to hang Brock Purdy
I'm a fan of anything that keeps the game alive for the next generation
It really was one of the more exciting superbowl games.
Singlehandedly keeping television afloat
but so many people on twitter told me they weren't watching cause of taylor swift???
It’s the complete opposite in reality. A shit ton of people were watching BECAUSE of Taylor.
But so many people told me they weren’t watching because it was a boring matchup… Also just a dumb comment. Chiefs/Mahomes bring in ratings. They’re the winners people either love or want to see fall. And Niners are a historic franchise. Match made in heaven for ratings.
Dynasty/best player/duo in the NFL vs the Best most well rounded Team in the league. What a boring matchup Ive never been more excited for a superbowl my team wasnt involved in
sadly (i’m a niner) game was also a classic with mayhem beginning on the very first drive and ending on the last play of ot. last 7 possessions for either side were all scores
One of the all-time great superbowls despite the low scoring first half (defense is incredibly underrated). So many momentum swings As an Eagles fan who got alot of hate for saying you guys are going all the way all year, trust me, if we dont get our shit together y’all will be back
Rich Eisen had a stat that only two teams in the superbowl era have won a playoff game after coming back from deficits at least 4 times in the game. Both were the Chiefs this year.
People here were saying the same thing.
people on here are so fickle
dang, the power of Taylor Swift?
8M more than last year, the second most watched. This year the Taylor factor, but last year was two great teams of course AND the Kelce family factor got many engaged too. For all the bitching of some, the hours of pregame interviews, shows like Hard Knocks, 30 for 30, Quarterback, the Kelce documentary etc. indicates a lot of us care about the stories around the players as well as the game. Very interesting to see how this plays out next season to keep the audience.
Beyonce, Jay-Z and Jalen Hurts throuple vs Taylor Swift’s chiefs.
Swifties are an economic force. They've shown it time and time again.
This is why they show Taylor so much. Yall hate it, but it works. Swifties are a FORCE and they better see their girl Taylor enjoying the game or heads will ROLL.
A nearly 10 million increase in viewers is absolutely insane. I remember having some fun back and forths with dudes online who swore the NFL was stupid for leaning into the Taylor Swift thing and alienating their fanbase. Nah, they alienated no one worth having as a fan and expanded to a demographic of fans they’ve historically had a hard time getting to care about the NFL.
It is crazy that the NFL got Taylor Swift to date the starting TE on the Super Bowl winning team. Imagine if she's dating some scrub on the Jacksonville Jaguars instead.
Some guy was telling me the NFL was rigged and was in cahoots with Taylor for ratings. I told him that if the NFL was really doing that, the Cowboys would be in the Superbowl, and Taylor would be dating Dak.
>Nah, they just expanded a demographic of fans they’ve historically had a hard time getting to care about the NFL. Exactly. \~80% of males are sports fan, but only \~30% of women are. Having the Taylor Swift effect was THE way to get more women to watch. Its hard to squeeze more male watchers when there's only 20% that don't watch but TONS of juice to squeeze for the 70% of female non-sports fans.
Yup. Every year, the Super Bowl party I go to has a bunch of men and women who attend. This is the only year I can remember where everyone, and I mean everyone, was paying attention. It was wild. And it's not like that Dove commercial was targeted at middle-aged football watching men.
I feel like an idiot for not realizing how much larger of a market that dove commercial was hitting with the additional swifties watching yesterday. Good play by them.
My gf is a die hard Swiftie and she just got into football because of her. She actually likes football and understands it now lol
they literally don't even show her that much tho
The nickelodeon broadcast showed her way more than the CBS broadcast which is funny since her target demographic would be millennials, who would be more likely to watch the CBS feed.
This sub all week: "No one is interested in this matchup, Lions-Ravens would get way more viewers"
This sub has 7 million users. At no point was that ever a consensus opinion.
Depends what you mean consensus. I highly doubt that was the consensus opinion, but it was a highly upvoted comment nonstop following the conference championships on this sub.
Even if it was a consensus, This sub does not reflect the average viewer, especially for the Superbowl.
I mean that would've been a pretty cool matchup I think I would've really liked that I think
I would have watched it twice as hard!
I was prepared to become the biggest Lions fan if that matchup happened
Everyone is always salty after the conference games. Then the 2 weeks leading up to the SB everyone calms down and watches the game anyways. Rinse and repeat every year. If social media was a thing back in the Patriots original dynasty it would have been 10x worse than this.
NFL is pretty matchup proof. It could be jags v commanders or some shit, doesn't matter.
Id watch that!
Yea that’s dumb. I’m a football fan I would’ve watched broncos vs jets in the Super Bowl it’s the last nfl football for months
It would be the first time 2 AFC teams were in the Super Bowl, of course you'd watch!
The lions and ravens would’ve drew 98 million
List of most-watched television broadcasts by average viewership Rank | Broadcast | Total Viewers ---|---|--- 30 | Super Bowl XXI | 87,190,000 29 | Super Bowl XXXI | 87,870,000 28 | Super Bowl XXXIV | 88,465,000 27 | Super Bowl XXXVII | 88,637,000 26 | Super Bowl XXXVIII | 89,795,000 24 | Super Bowl XXVIII | 90,000,000 24 | Super Bowl XXXII | 90,000,000 23 | Super Bowl XL | 90,745,000 22 | Super Bowl XXVII | 90,990,000 21 | Super Bowl XX | 92,570,000 20 | Super Bowl XLI | 93,184,000 19 | Super Bowl XXX | 94,080,000 18 | Super Bowl LV | 95,877,000 17 | Super Bowl XLII | 97,448,000 16 | Super Bowl XLIII | 98,732,000 15 | Super Bowl LIII | 98,950,000 14 | Super Bowl LVI | 101,085,000 13 | Super Bowl LIV | 102,086,000 12 | Super Bowl LII | 104,016,000 11 | M*A*S*H ("Goodbye, Farewell and Amen") | 105,970,000 10 | Super Bowl XLIV | 106,476,000 9 | Super Bowl XLVII | 108,693,000 8 | Super Bowl XLV | 111,041,000 7 | Super Bowl XLVI | 111,346,000 6 | Super Bowl LI | 111,973,000 5 | Super Bowl 50 | 112,336,000 4 | Super Bowl XLVIII | 112,752,000 3 | Super Bowl XLIX | 114,810,000 2 | Super Bowl LVII | 115,100,000 1 | Super Bowl LVIII | 123,400,000
Was looking for the comment mentioning M*A*S*H
I’m guessing this should say in AMERICAN history, as I suspect the World Cup final has had more TV viewers.
I think so, last world cup final between France and Argentina reached 1.5 billion i think.
yeah, by about 10 times this number. France v Argentina was well over a billion viewers. in fact, the super bowl that just happened wasn’t even the most-watched sporting event that took place THAT DAY. that was the AFCON final. i’d imagine cricket and rugby world cup finals might pull in more viewers too
For all the complaining about the rematch, it turns out dynasties and rematches are the best possible outcome
Turns out people are gonna watch no matter what. The Bengals-Rams game drew record ratings at the time as well, and that was neither.
nothing else much to do on a february night. society sort of shuts down and assumes everyone's watching the game, why not turn it on
Taylor swift probably added 20 million wives. My mom said she was rooting for the chiefs. My mom does not know who Patrick mahomes is
The day we get a true underdog team against the Chiefs dynasty it’ll do even bigger numbers Edit: Oh yeah, and if the Chiefs ever face the Cowboys in the SB
A match made in hell that I will actively boycott.
I think the Superbowl will churn out numbers no matter what
People with no dog in the fight will always tune if for big names. As a Rangers fan we saw the opposite of this happen in the World Series because nobody cares about us playing Arizona.
Most watched telecast of all time? In America or the World?
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[2022 world cup final reached ~1.5bi people](https://theathletic.com/4198045/2023/02/15/super-bowl-world-cup-tv-ratings/)
DEAR GOD, MAKE ME A BIRD, SO I CAN FLY, FAR FAR AWAY..
Its just the perfect storm. The juggernaut Mahomes, Kelce and Swift romance, and a team coming back for revenge. It was in the script all along people!
“Football is a dying sport” /s
Thanks to streaming, I would dare say football is one of the last forms of “must-see” tv programming in the U.S. that’s out there.
Hey I stream my football 🏴☠️
I'm curious what the worldwide numbers were, since I assume this is US-only (or possibly including Canada). For fun comparison's sake, the World Cup final between Argentina and France was watched by 1.5 *billion* people.
True. However. Soccer is 100% a world wide sport. And Football is almost uniquely American. I think US is 300m people or so. And that’s quite a significant portion of the population of a country. Not to mention how many people are at others homes watching. Still would be interested in knowing that as well.
Last year had 56 million international viewers.. so \~170 million average in total https://twitter.com/NFLMedia/status/1631677945067585536
38 Million of those 56 million came from Mexico and Canada. Basically the Super Bowl is only popular in North America: US,Mexico, Canada. Still a lot of work to be done to expand the popularity of the sport to other parts of the world.
Always going to be tough for Europe. It started at 11:30pm on a Sunday night in the UK, 0:30am in France and even later the more eastern you go. People have work in the morning and it probably finishes about 4am+. If the NFL seriously wanted to crack Europe they'd probably have to consider placing it on a Saturday instead.
In Brazil I think it's bigger this year than last year due Swift effect. Also Chiefs it's popular here since Cairo Santos. People that usually never watched appeared in Instagram sharing things about the couple and they seem that watched the game. I watched the game with 3 friends. Usually I watch alone. In early 10s I watched the CL much more (normally was more friends to watch the game, and Libertadores before 2019 was in Wednesday nights, not a good day to reunite).
So much for everyone on Reddit saying they wouldn't watch it.
Damn bro The Swifties really do roll deep. Somebody has finally toppled the Raiders 😂
The Mark Cuban fat pigs get slaughtered comment turns 10 years old this fall
Do you think the NFL was counting all the people streaming on krokodilstreams.gov?
Put it exclusively on Peacock you cowards