Three different audience measurement providers reported the audience for Super Bowl LVIII grew year-over-year. Nielsen reports the averrage audience set a record
In this era of audience fragmentation, when year-over-year viewing for virtually every program continue to decline, the Super Bowl has actually increased their audience, cementing the game as the sole blockbuster event on television/streaming. Three different audience measurement providers, Nielsen, iSpot, and Samba TV all reported the audience for Super Bowl LVIII (Kansas City vs. San Francisco) was greater than last year’s big game.
Nielsen: Nielsen, which has been tracking Super Bowl ratings since the first game in January 1967, reports Super Bowl LVIII on CBS, Univision, Nickelodeon, Paramount+ and other digital services averaged 123.4 million viewers (persons 2+), making it the most watched program in the U.S. The game was also a 7% increase from last year’s record audience of 115.1 million viewers (which Nielsen had revised upward last May).
According to Nielsen’s fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics, the CBS feed averaged 120 million viewers. Univision averaged 2.2 million viewers, making it the most watched Super Bowl on any Spanish language network. The Nickelodeon simulcast, which had a SpongeBob themed feed, averaged about 1.2 million viewers. (By comparison, in 2023 Nickelodeon averaged 190,000 viewers in primetime). The Paramount+ audience was included in the CBS total, the network said Super Bowl LVIII had also set a streaming record.
(Nielsen began including out-of-home viewing in their ratings service in September 2020. Sports Media Watch said, unofficially, the 2017 Super Bowl overtime game Patriots-Falcons had averaged 124.6 million which included out-of-home viewing but not included. Several other Super Bowls which had only measured in-home viewing may have also surpassed Super Bowl LVIII if out-of-home was officially measured.)
Nielsen also reported 202.4 million viewers had tuned in to some portion (a minimum of six minutes) of Super Bowl LVIII, a year-over-year increase of 10% (184 million).
