America’s favorite unofficial holiday, Superbowl Sunday, was a fortuitous one for the Fox Network, as this year’s telecast was the most watched of any Super Bowl ever. An average of 113 million people tuned in to watch the event, which is one of the rare programs that actually gets ratings in an increasingly streaming-heavy world.
This means that not only was it 1 percent bigger than last year’s game, according to Nielsen numbers shared by Variety, but it’s the third most-watched TV show of all time. That’s pretty huge. The only programs to beat it? Also Super Bowls.
The 2015 Patriots-Seahawks game pulled in just over 114 million viewers and the 2017 Patriots-Falcons game garnered just under 114. The numbers for the latest game include viewership through Fox, Fox Deportes and streaming Fox and NFL properties.
The numbers represent an average of how many people had the game on at any given time, but viewers who watched any part of the game clocks in at 183 million. One factor in viewership was the half time show put on by Rihanna, who debuted a new baby bump and treated the performance as a pregnancy reveal as well.
This year’s telecast far outshone last year’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers-Kansas City Chiefs game, which brought in an average of 91.6 million. It doesn’t hurt that the Super Bowl in America is considered more of an event than a game, with people across the country congregating for get togethers to watch.
There are also the commercials. This year there was a Grease-themed ad with John Travolta, a Tubi ad that looked like the channels were changing, and Rakuten resurrected Clueless complete with original actress Alicia Silverstone.