(Bloomberg) — A combined audience of 112.3 million people watched the Super Bowl on various outlets, a 16% jump from last year’s diminished viewership.
Some 99.2 million people viewed the game on NBC, another 1.9 million on its Spanish-language sibling Telemundo, and 11.2 million on streaming services such as Peacock, the network said in an email, making it the most-watched Super Bowl in five years.
The strong turnout was another sign the National Football League is gaining viewers despite a shrinking television landscape. Ratings for the regular season were up 10%. The league likely benefited from factors such as a return of fans to stadiums, increased interest in sports betting and some really close games.
Sunday’s matchup featured the Los Angeles Rams defeating the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 after Matthew Stafford threw a 1-yard touchdown pass to Cooper Kupp with less than 2 minutes remaining.
CBS, a unit of ViacomCBS Inc., said last year that it drew an audience of 96.4 million TV and digital viewers for the big game. That matchup, featuring the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a lopsided 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, was the smallest audience for the Super Bowl in more than a decade.
NBC, which is owned by Comcast Corp., sold 30-second Super Bowl commercials this year for as much as $7 million, a record. The network said it had 81 national spots. Advertisers for the game included cryptocurrency exchanges, carmakers and streaming services.
NBC used the big Super Bowl audience to boost Winter Olympics coverage, which is seeing a steep decline in TV viewership. NBC aired Olympic events right after the Super Bowl, a departure from the past when broadcasters have typically used that time slot to promote a TV show.
NBC said its Beijing Olympics broadcast after the Super Bowl drew 24 million viewers, marking its largest Olympics primetime audience since the opening day of the 2018 winter games.
(Updates with Olympics numbers in last paragraph.)
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