The 2024 Super Bowl had record viewership for CBS Sports.
CBS averaged 123.4 million viewers across CBS, Univision, Nickelodeon, Paramount+ and the NFL app on Monday, with 120 million of those viewers coming through the main CBS feed, the most in Super Bowl history. It was announced that.
The previous record was last year’s Chiefs-Eagles tilt (115 million), which aired on NBC, an increase of 7%.
Notably, CBS’s 120 million viewers were also the largest for a single network.
Several factors contributed to this year’s impressive numbers.
The game had two traditional fan bases, and the Niners in particular had a wide fan base dating back to their five Super Bowl championships between 1981 and 1994.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has become the face of the NFL, appearing in four of the past five Super Bowls and winning three of them.
The relationship between Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce and perhaps the most famous person on the planet, Taylor Swift, has also been a driving force in drawing casual spectators to these games throughout the season. ing.
Since avid viewers flock to the tent anyway, ratings tend to rise and fall depending on how many casual viewers flock to the tent.
The game was close from beginning to end, going into overtime and taking almost the entire 15 minutes before Mahomes scored the winning touchdown on Mecole Hardman.
Historically, close games lead to higher ratings for obvious reasons.
More and more people feel safe to watch other things or sleep during a blowout.
Finally, in 2020, Nielsen began aggregating out-of-home ratings instantly.
This means counting the number of viewers who were watching the Super Bowl at the homes of friends and family, or in bars, restaurants, hotels, gyms, hospitals, etc.
These viewers were always counted in the final count, but the metric has started to appear higher in recent years as they are included in instant ratings announcements.
Nielsen in late 2021 announced that it had underestimated viewers outside of their homes.And anecdotally, the number of large-scale live sports events has been on the rise ever since.
