CBS’s coverage of Super Bowl LIII drew 100.7 million viewers across all platforms, down 2.6 percent from 103.4 million viewers last year.
According to Fast Total Audience Estimates from Nielsen, the New England Patriots’ low-scoring victory over the Los Angeles Rams was watched in all or part by 149 million people age 2 and up.
Streaming the Super Bowl set records. The average minute audience was 2.6 million viewers, up 31 percent from last year. The game was seen on 7.5 million unique devices, up 20% from last year, and viewers consumed more than 560 million total minutes of live game coverage, up 19 percent from last year.
CBS said Super Sunday delivered the biggest day even for new subscriptions to CBS All Access. Sign ups were up 84 percent, unique viewers rose 46 percent and there was a 76 percent increase in time spent on CBS All Access.
CBS said that for its owned stations in Los Angeles and Boston, this year’s game was the highest rated Super Bowl ever.
Following the game, CBS drew 22.22 million viewers for The World’s Best, best ever for CBS. The Late Show drew 5.52 million viewers, its third highest total ever.
The lower viewership was matched by estimates that CBS drew fewer ad dollars for the Super Bowl.
Kantar Media’s preliminary estimate for in-game ad revenue for Super Bowl LIII is $382 million, down 6 percent from $408 million in last year’s game The record was set in 2017, when the Super Bowl went into overtime and Fox rang up revenues of $419 million, according to Kantar.
Data and analytics company iSpot.TV estimates that advertisers spent $391 million on in-game spots on CBS during the Super Bowl.
