Initial figures from Samba TV indicate viewership for Super Bowl LVII was nearly flat when compared to ratings for the 2022 Super Bowl.
The game—which is consistently the most watched TV event of the year—between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, notched a slight increase of approximately half a percentage point compared to 2022’s Super Bowl LVI.
Overall, based on Samba TV’s analysis derived from its nationally weighted household panel, which pulls from over 25 million connected TVs in the U.S. measuring both linear and streaming TV consumption, 36.7 million households in the U.S. watched the Super Bowl this year compared to 36.5 million who tuned in last year. This number does not include any mobile consumption or out-of-home viewership.
“Super Bowl LVII had a number of historic firsts that combined to make this year’s big game the most watched since 2020 with over one in four American households tuning in. More than 36.5 million homes watched the Chief’s come-from-behind victory over the Eagles, surpassing last year’s viewership by nearly half a percent,” said Samba TV Founder and CEO Ashwin Navin.
Chief’s fans pushed Kansas City to become the highest over-indexing market in the U.S. in terms of viewership, surpassing the national average by 20%, Eagles’ hometown fans followed closely behind, with Philadelphia over-indexing the national average by 15%.
The halftime show featuring a solo performance by Rihanna drew a sizeable audience, but was down slightly from last year’s performance. Approximately 28.5 million households in the U.S. tuned in for the Super Bowl Halftime Show, compared to the 28.7 million that tuned in for last year’s show backed by Pepsi.
Samba TV also provided an advance look at its upcoming Super Bowl ad rankings that will be released later this week which analyze the top scoring ads from Sunday’s game in terms of overall household viewership. The Farmers Dog scored the #1 spot amongst all brand advertising commercials.
“Farmers Dog broke the internet and our hearts with 60 seconds of pure joy taking millions of football fans along for a tear-filled journey to one of the sweetest and emotionally packed endings of any Super Bowl commercial we have seen in years. The ad not only captured massive social buzz, it won the Super Bowl ads race reaching more than 28 million homes,” said Navin.
“As we are seeing with almost all of linear television today, while the price of advertising continues to increase—in the case of the Super Bowl by nearly 10% per ad since last year alone — audience reach is not keeping up as this year’s slight year-over-year viewership increase demonstrates.”
In 2022, the NFL announced that an estimated 208 million Americans viewed Super Bowl LVI, based on a survey in collaboration with Nielsen, which is expected to release its own figures for Super Bowl LVII later this week.
