The FOX Sports presentation of Super Bowl LIX between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs is projected to have averaged 126 million viewers on FOX, FOX Deportes, Telemundo and NFL digital properties. This would break the previous record established for last year’s championship game of 123.7 million viewers, marking record-high viewership for the Super Bowl and the most-watched television program in U.S. history. The game is projected to have peaked with 135.7 million viewers during the 8 to 8:15 p.m. EST quarter-hour, which aligns with the second quarter of the game. Michael Mulvihill, the president of insights and analytics for FOX Sports, also shared that the game is projected to have averaged 131.2 million viewers during halftime.
The contest is also said to have record-high streaming viewership on Tubi and NFL digital properties with 14.5 million consumers watching the game. Tubi was measured to have independently delivered 13.6 million viewers for the contest, which was streaming in 4K on the streaming platform. Viewership data for the game is provided by Nielsen Fast Nationals and Tubi/NFL first-party analytics. Final average viewership numbers for the game will be available on Tuesday morning, but at the moment, it marks the fifth consecutive year of viewership growth for the championship game.
Compared to the previous year, average viewership for the Super Bowl was up 1.86%, although the number could change based on final numbers. FOX last broadcast the Super Bowl to close the 2022 season and averaged 115.1 million viewers across all platforms, indicative of this iteration of the contest achieving 9.47% higher viewership.
The city of New Orleans last hosted the Super Bowl in 2013 when the Baltimore Ravens defeated the San Francisco 49ers, ending with an average of 108.9 million viewers on CBS. Out-of-home viewership for this year’s game measured by Nielsen Media Research covers 100% of the contiguous television population in the United States, up from 66% in the previous year, and is now implemented for overnight and Big Data + Panel ratings.
The 40-22 victory by the Eagles over the Chiefs marked the second Super Bowl championship in the last seven seasons. Furthermore, it marked the first occurrence in which seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady was behind the microphone for the contest, completing the first season in a 10-year deal with FOX Sports reportedly worth a total of $375 million. Brady was joined by play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt, calling his second Super Bowl for the network, along with sideline reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi and rules analyst Mike Pereira.
Fox Corporation is in the third year of a 10-year media rights deal with the NFL reportedly worth $2.25 billion annually. The NFL has the ability to opt out of the deal and most of its other domestic media rights contracts following the 2029 season. FOX will broadcast the Super Bowl again at the conclusion of the 2028 season from a locale yet to be announced. The next three Super Bowl championship games will be televised by Comcast (NBC/Peacock), The Walt Disney Company (ESPN/ABC) and Paramount Global (CBS/Paramount+), respectively.
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