It would be the second straight year the Super Bowl has reached a record audience.
Fox Sports is estimating that the Super Bowl game between Philadelphia and Kansas City on Sunday night drew a record average audience of 126 million viewers in the United States, including both television and online streaming platforms.
The game was televised by Fox, Fox Deportes and Telemundo and streamed on Tubi as well as the NFL’s digital platforms.
The projections by Fox included preliminary data from Nielsen, as well as streaming numbers from Tubi and the NFL. More detailed and updated data was anticipated to be released on Tuesday.
This year marks the second consecutive year that the Super Bowl has set a new record for viewership. Last year’s game between Kansas City and San Francisco, which ended in a 25-22 overtime victory for the Chiefs, garnered an average audience of 123.7 million viewers across platforms like CBS, Nickelodeon, Univision, and various streaming services.
According to Fox, the audience peaked at 135.7 million in the second quarter.
The early data projects 14.5 million watched on streaming platforms, including 13.6 million on Tubi, where the game was available for free.
Some of the increase can be attributed to a change in the way viewers are counted. This is the first year Nielsen is measuring out-of-home viewers for all states but Hawaii and Alaska.
It was previously the top 44 media markets, which covered 65% of the country.
The ratings also include Nielsen data from smart TVs along with cable and satellite set-top boxes.
After two straight years of close Super Bowls, Sunday’s game was decided in the first half as Philadelphia built a 24-0 lead.
This Super Bowl also had Donald Trump and Taylor Swift in attendance.
Trump was the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl, while Swift’s romance with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce continues to keep the pop superstar’s fans interested in the NFL.
It was the third straight year the Super Bowl averaged more than 100 million viewers after a period where four of the five games before 2023 had fallen short of that number because of cord-cutting. That included 95.2 million for the 2021 Super Bowl between Tampa Bay and Kansas City, which was the game’s lowest TV-only average since 2007.
The NFL playoffs averaged 35.2 million viewers the first three weekends, down 9% from last year’s record of 38.5 million.
That followed a regular season that averaged 17.5 million. While that was the sixth-highest average dating to 1995, it was a 2% decline from 2023.
