Posted on 02/09/2021 8:59:31 AM PST by Red Badger
There was a lot of history at Super Bowl LV on Sunday. Unfortunately, not all of it looks good when it comes to how many people actually watched – and we’re not just talking about Nielsen’s unprecedented delay in getting the actual data out.
In figures released Tuesday morning by CBS Sports, the big game had a total audience of 96.4 million viewers on CBS and a bundle of platforms and outlets, according to Nielsen. Confirming suspicions that many had even going into the matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs, that is the least-watched Super Bowl in recent history.
With around 91.6 million viewers on CBS alone, the 2021 Super Bowl is still the most watched show of the past year. However, taking an 8% stumble from what Fox had on its broadcast network last year, the 55th Super Bowl distinctly had the smallest network audience since the very different TV era of 2006.
What is also true is that the total numbers, from CBS, CBS Sports and NFL digital properties, Buccaneers and Chiefs mobile properties, Verizon Media mobile properties and ESPN Deportes television and digital properties, are the lowest since 2007. They are down around 5% from what last year’s Chiefs win over the San Francisco 49ers pulled in.
That Super Bowl LIV figure was a culmination of Fox, Fox Deportes and Fox, NFL and Verizon’s digital properties. The cumulative 2020 end result was a touch ahead of the 100.7 million who watched the 2019 Super Bowl across a pantheon of CBS and NFL properties and platforms.
The bruising viewership aside, there were some other pretty major historical aspects to Sunday’s gridiron face-off.
On the digital curve, Super Bowl LV was the most live-streamed in history, averaging 5.7 million viewers per minute, up 69% from 2020’s pervious high.
Now as the Buccaneers and Raymond James Stadium will brag for years, Sunday was also the first time the NFL’s big game was won by a team playing on their home turf.
Add to the procession of honors, in his first year in the Sunshine State metropolis, this victory was quarterback Tom Brady’s 10th Super Bowl and his seventh win, two new records. GOAT Brady also shattered his own record as the oldest Super Bowl-winning QB at the AARP-looming age of 43. Brady is the first QB to win the Super Bowl in three different decades and the first player to clench multiple titles after the ripe old age of 40.
The Buccaneers’ assistant defensive line coach Lori Locust and assistant strength and conditioning coach Maral Javadifar became the first female coaches to win a Super Bowl.
Also in the mix, February 7’s primetime game on CBS had the first halftime show headlined by a Canadian, with The Weeknd taking center stage – though we don’t have any figures yet for how many people actually watched his performance. Staying in the music realm, Super Bowl LV was the first time a “common ground”-seeking Bruce Springsteen appeared in a Super Bowl ad too. Sunday’s extravaganza was also the first Super Bowl to have a poet literally read a pre-game composition, as the amazing Amanda Gorman did Sunday.
In terms of the history books, the 31-9 blowout by the Buccaneers over last year’s champs wasn’t the most lopsided win ever; that still goes to the 49ers’ 55-10 thrashing of the Denver Broncos in 1990. However, it sure felt like it at times Sunday, even to some of the commentators who are hired to toss hyperboles around freely.
Back to the harsh viewership, the historical reality is no big surprise when you look at the big picture for the big game. Despite technical and cultural efforts to make the Covid-19 restrictions of Sunday’s game a non-event, the action on the field was just not the kind of drama that sports analysts and CBS programmers were anticipating. Which, with two less than top market teams participating, likely saw a lot of viewers clicking elsewhere on the first Sunday of February as the outcome became obvious long before the game was over.
Additionally, despite the best efforts of the Roger Goodell-led league to pump up the process and relatively empty stadiums, the NFL had a 10% drop in ratings on average this season after two years of increases – a fall that can’t help but hit the Super Bowl itself and dim enthusiasm as teams and supporters quarreled over safety protocols, cultural and racial justice, and a schedule that sometimes went off the rails due to positive coronavirus test results.
In other figures from Sunday, the 10:39 PM ET postgame premiere of the new version of The Equalizer starring Queen Latifah snagged an audience of 20.4 million. The drama was solidly the top-viewed series start of the current TV season and, with a 5.1 among adults 18-49, the highest-rated entertainment show since the Oscars in February 2020. Still, The Equalizer was down 14% from what The Masked Singer‘s Season 3 opener scored in its post-game start last year on Fox.
Moving deeper into the night, the 12:14 a.m. ET airing of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert snared 4.8 million viewers. The special, which had Robert Downey Jr and Metallica as guests, as the late-nighter’s best viewership and demo rating (1.1) since its last post-Super Bowl showing in 2019.
Furthermore, because who doesn’t love more stats, check out the Top 5 most watched Super Bowls here:
1. 2015: 114.4 million – Super Bowl XLIX: New England Patriots vs. Seattle Seahawks (NBC)
2. 2014: 112.2 million – Super Bowl XLVIII: Seattle Seahawks vs. Denver Broncos (Fox)
3. 2016: 111.9 million – Super Bowl 50: Denver Broncos vs. Carolina Panthers (CBS)
4. 2012: 111.35 million – Super Bowl XLVI: New York Giants vs. New England Patriots (NBC)
5. 2017: 111.32 million – Super Bowl LI: New England Patriots vs. Atlanta Falcons (Fox)
Hmmmm, I wonder what the demographics were...
What hath Kaepernick wrought? Wreckage.
I don’t watch sports to be hectored by intellectual adolescents.
Of course it’s “most streamed game ever” - 2020 brought on most massive transition of population to use of streaming services in general.
Pity (*cough*) NFL gave people reason to not watch.
What a stupid idea for a TV show (reboot).
How many stream numbers were banked racks of computers strictly there to bump numbers?
Big Media already has been caught doing this with “pop star” songs.
This article didn’t mention the this was the first Suoer Bowl with a woman referee. Interesting omission when mentioning there are women coaches on the Buccanneers, and the presumed steps forward for women noted here.
When the players start to respect our flag and national anthem I may watch again. NOT!
Just imagine what the real numbers were.
I don’t believe for a moment that they are real. These numbers are generated from Hollywood on behalf of leftist companies for the purpose of setting ad rates of other leftist companies. So these low numbers were the ones they settled on after 24 hours of discussions with various stakeholders making the real numbers significantly lower.
the nfl is dying from colin cancer...
How many stream numbers were banked racks of computers strictly there to bump numbers?
Big Media already has been caught doing this with “pop star” songs.
If the above can be done, the dems who control the media would do it.
They had no problems lying about their election coup on Nov 03, 2020!
But how many actually paid attention to the game?
How many habitually blanked the commercials
that they would usually have actually paid attention to?
How much after game griping about what a
colossal waste of bandwidth the event was?
Yeah but wait for the re-runs! Viewership will skyrocket, says the commish......
It wasn’t just him that brought the wreckage, it w a s management who allowed the disrespectful kneeling, it was the players who disrespected our hungry and flag, it was the fans who supported the disgraceful acts of spoiled rotten players looking for their 15 minutes. Their disrespect of this nation and everything we stand for spread like a cancer, into other sports as well, even metastasizing into the Olympics, with despicable displays of ignorance and disrespect by our teams who were there representing our nation on a world stage.
The NFL embraced it and supported it and even went so far as to punish those who didn’t crap all over our nation by kneeling during the anthem.
Blm is a domestic terrorism group who have tremendous influence over many businesses in this country, bullying myriads of companies into compliance by threatening anyone that doesn’t cow tow to them, all While claiming how oppressed they are, and how enslaved they are.
THEY are the ones doing the enslaving, and harassing, and engaging In Racist attacks now, nd the have the nerve to claim that they are the oppressed ones ?
They lie about police violence towar s blacks, black folks were the most protected group in the US last year, with only 9 being shot and only 2 of them possibly being unjustified shots.the rest were shot justifiably. 53 cops .ast year lost their lives when confronti g armed criminals, likely mostly black, in mostly black neighborhoods. Only 2 unarmed black folks did.
Out of millions and millions of arrests, and encounters, domestic violence encounters and such. Having only 2, TWO,unarmed b lack people get shot unjustifiable for a whole year, is absolutely remarkable. It shows the cops exercised tremendous accountibi,accountability, and restraint whenencojntering black folks.
Something like 20 white folks were shot possibly unjustifiably. Oh, and the cops who shot the two unarmed black folks were prosecuted and found guilty. So I’d like to ask the disrespectful, mega millionair spoiled rotten sports players, where is all this supposed “systemic racism”?
I waited until the third quarter to watch some because I wanted to miss the inevitable racism of the pre-game, halftime, and commenting (most of their woke preaching is in the first half).
I didn’t watch the commercials, and changed the channel to another e r show I was watching at the same time, and when I switched back c k I saw the ignorant jeep slogan “reunited states of America” splashed across the scene, so I rewound the commercial, and sure enough, it said what I thought it was saying! I also thought I recognized Bruce, but wasn’t sure, sure enough, it was the woke lefty I. Action again.
LOL. They should l da taken care of all the polyps when they had a chance
This year, we knew the ads were going to be preachy and full of "white guilt' crap. We didn't even bother.
That demonic abomination of what masqeraded as a halftime show sure didn’t help. That was freakin’ weird dude.
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