Super Bowl has 101 million TV viewers, up from 2021
NEW YORK (AP) — The Super Bowl rebounded to draw an estimated 101.1 million television viewers who saw the Los Angeles Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals on a late-game drive, proving the dominance of football as an audience magnet.
That was a 6% increase over the 95.2 million TV viewers who saw the Tampa Bay Bucs crowned as champions in 2021, the Nielsen company said on Tuesday.
The ratings improvement for what is traditionally the most-watched event of the year was no surprise, given the run of terrific playoff games leading up to it. Viewership for the NFL's divisional round was up 20% over last year, and the conference championships were up 10%, Nielsen said.
Besides the good games, a sense — or hope — that the coronavirus pandemic may be winding down might have contributed to the increased audience, said Cole Strain, head of measurement for the research firm Samba TV.
“We felt there was a little more freedom,” Strain said.
The halftime show starring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Mary K. Blige was also a hit, and NBC expressed hope that the game's halo will kick-start ratings for the otherwise disappointing Winter Olympics in Beijing.
NBC said another 11.2 million people streamed this year’s game, putting the total audience at 112.3 million people. The audience for television and streaming combined is up 12.6% over last year.
For its hometown Bengals, Cincinnati had the highest audience share in the country, meaning the percentage of television viewers watching the game, Nielsen said. Los Angeles didn't even make the top 10 markets.
The most-watched Super Bowl ever remains the 2015 game between New England and Seattle, which had 114.4 million viewers. Last year's slip gave rise to some thinking that the NFL wasn't immune to the overall drop in audience that...
