CBS Sports and the National Football League have announced that Super Bowl LVIII was the most-watched telecast in history with an average total audience delivery of 123.4 million viewers across various platforms, including CBS, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision and digital properties owned by CBS Sports and the NFL. The metrics are according to Nielsen Fast National data and Adobe Analytics, with final Nielsen numbers to be available on Tuesday.
The championship game, which ended in a 25-22 overtime victory for the Kansas City Chiefs over the San Francisco 49ers, grew its average audience by 7% year-over-year. Kansas City won that championship as well with a victory over Philadelphia and are now winners of the Vince Lombardi Trophy for three of the last five seasons. No team has ever won three consecutive Super Bowl championships, a feat the Chiefs will look to achieve next year.
More than 200 million viewers watched all or part of Super Bowl LVIII across networks, rendering the game with the highest unduplicated total audience in history of 202.4 million. Last year’s game drew a total unduplicated audience of 183.6 million, placing Super Bowl LVIII up 10% compared to last year. The game also achieved a record-setting audience on Paramount+ that made it the most-streamed Super Bowl in history, further demonstrating the growth and appeal of OTT streaming platforms.
For CBS specifically, the network averaged 120 million viewers for its broadcast of the matchup, the largest audience in history for a single network. For the year as a whole, the NFL on CBS garnered its most-watched regular season since the NFL returned to CBS in 1998 in addition to its most-watched postseason since that year as well.
CBS Sports presented programming leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, including NFL Slimetime, You Are Looking Live and The NFL Today. Paramount Global offered two telecasts for the game – the traditional call on CBS and alternate broadcast on Nickelodeon – both of which were available to stream on Paramount+. Additionally, this was the last Super Bowl broadcast under the leadership of CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus, who is retiring from his role this April and will be succeeded by David Berson, the current president of the company.
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
