Official Super Bowl number affirms record-setting audience, at least on paper

It’s official, Super Bowl LIX has set a viewership record.

On Tuesday, Fox Sports released the final measurements for the Philadelphia Eagles’ blowout win over the Kansas City Chiefs, with 127.7 million viewers being the combined figure across Fox, Telemundo, Fox Deportes, the Fox Sports App, and Tubi.

Of course, as has been covered on this very site, the record-setting audience isn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison to past Super Bowls. This season’s measurement includes Nielsen’s new out-of-home viewing methodology, which has been expanded to include the entire country (up from about two-thirds of the country last season). Additionally, Fox’s figure includes first-party streaming data from Tubi and Adobe Analytics.

These new measurements serve to juice the final number as compared to prior years. For instance, if last year’s Super Bowl between the Chiefs and 49ers was given a 50% boost to out-of-home viewing (which is essentially what Nielsen’s expanded out-of-home measurement did), then it would have easily surpassed this year’s Super Bowl.

So it’s fair to call this Super Bowl a RINO (record in name only), just like it was likely fair to do the same for last year’s record-setting number on CBS. It’s far more likely that Super Bowl LI — the New England Patriots infamous 28-3 comeback win over the Atlanta Falcons — is actually the most-watched Super Bowl in history; though there are also arguments for some others that were played before Nielsen began tracking out-of-home.

But even given the countless caveats, Fox has a solid story to tell about this year’s Super Bowl viewership.

Chief among those stories is the success of Tubi. Fox’s free ad-supported television (FAST) platform chipped in 14.5 million viewers according to the network’s first party data, up 27% from last year’s streaming figure on Paramount+.

While many are unfamiliar, Tubi is the seventh-largest streaming platform by viewership in the United States, ranking ahead of other more well-known streamers like Peacock, Paramount+, and Max according to Nielsen. Tubi offered a free 4K stream of this year’s Super Bowl, the first to ever air on a FAST platform.

Attracting 14.5 million viewers on a platform that has, in the past, only aired live sports like the World Baseball Classic and random low-wattage CONCACAF soccer games is an undeniable success. 14.5 million is more people than watched Games 2 and 3 of last year’s World Series between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers across all platforms.

And with Fox supposedly looking to get into the streaming game in the near future, a successful broadcast on Tubi has to make the company feel good about its ability to distribute live sports through streaming.

As for other facts and figures about Fox’s broadcast, the game’s Spanish-language viewership on Telemundo and Fox Deportes combined for 1.87 million viewers, down from 2.3 million on Univision last year.

Viewership for the broadcast peaked at 137.7 million viewers during the second quarter (8:00 – 8:15 p.m. ET), with 133.5 million viewers sticking around for Kendrick Lamark’s halftime performance.

Given the blowout nature of Sunday’s game, and Nielsen’s expected methodological changes that will further juice viewership in the year to come, expect next year’s Super Bowl on NBC to set yet another record.