Thanks to a thrilling overtime game, roller king Usher and the power of Taylor Swift, the 2024 Super Bowl set a ratings record.
According to Nielsen, the Kansas City Chiefs’ 25-22 win over the San Francisco 49ers averaged 123.7 million viewers across all CBS platforms, making it the most-watched Super Bowl of all time. It is now also the most watched program in TV history.
Additionally, the CBS broadcast had 120.3 million viewers, the largest audience in history for a single network. The remaining 3.5 million viewers came from those who watched the broadcast on other platforms, including CBS Television Network, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, CBS Sports, as well as Univision and NFL digital properties (such as NFL+). A total of 202.4 million viewers watched the game “in whole or in part” (at least six minutes), representing approximately 60% of the US population. It was up 10% from last year’s Super Bowl, which previously held the record for the most-watched program in TV history.
How does that compare to the TV record books?
This Super Bowl is the most watched American TV broadcast since the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, according to research by Nielsen, which measures media audiences. That news event aired on multiple networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) and attracted between 125 and 150 million viewers. The latter number amounted to almost three-quarters of the US population, which at the time was 202 million. The US population has since grown to reach 335 million in 2023.
The rest of the top 10 most-watched TV shows of all time are other Super Bowls, broadcast on individual networks:
Super Bowl LVII in 2023 (115.11 million)
Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 (114.4 million)
Super Bowl LVI in 2022 (112.3 million)
Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014 (112.2 million)
Super Bowl 50 in 2016 (111.9 million)
Super Bowl XLVI in 2012 (111.3 million)
Super Bowl LI in 2017 (111.3 million)
Super Bowl XLV in 2011 (111 million)
Non-sports events in the top 25 include Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation speech, a news event that aired on multiple networks and attracted 110 million viewers.
As for other programs, the M*A*S*H The 1983 series finale had 105.9 million viewers and remains the most watched TV finale ever.
The day after, a two-hour TV movie about a nuclear attack on Central America, was broadcast (and scared!) in 1983 to 100 million viewers. It is still the most watched TV movie ever.
The same number of people, 100 million, tuned in to the final of the Carrots miniseries, according to History Channel.
Also high in the ranks is the episode of the TV soap from 1978 Dallas, which revealed who shot JR (83.6 million tuned in) and the finals of cheers in 1993 (80.5 million) and Seinfeld in 1998 (76.3 million).
On the news front, OJ Simpson’s car chase, which aired on multiple networks in 1994, drew 95 million gawking viewers.
Super Bowl has become rare ‘cultural glue’
Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, tells Yahoo Entertainment that what’s “extraordinary” to him about the sheer number of people tuned in for this year’s Super Bowl is that it’s happening at a time when streaming allows viewers to watch everything at one time.
“We have all these other choices,” he says. “For example, the Oscars got huge ratings because there were three networks on primetime. You had three choices. So it was inevitable that when cable came along, and you had other things to choose from, the ratings of everything would drop because the pie had more pieces. When streaming came, you expected a real fall because of all those other choices. What that means is that there really is no longer a sense that everyone is looking at the same thing at the same time – that ‘cultural glue’. So when it happens, it is so precious and valuable.”
Now it really only happens once a year – for the Super Bowl.
“The Super Bowl actually benefits from audience fragmentation,” Thompson explains. “Everything else goes down [in ratings] – dramas, comedies, award shows – none of them get the numbers they got pre-streaming and even pre-cable, except for the Super Bowl.”
He attributes this to the fact that the Super Bowl has been “carefully constructed as a national holiday” with an appeal beyond just football fans.
It’s “a holiday around a TV show,” he explains. “There are actually three shows rolled into one football game: the actual football game, the musical performance during the halftime show and the Madison Avenue Film Festival are the commercials. And we’ve been carefully conditioned to think that’s what the Super Bowl is [a] you should watch it and you should have a party. The ritual aspects surrounding it make it a rare communal shared experience.
Nowadays there is no longer the kind of community that was common around finals (as we saw with M*A*S*H And Seinfeld) or major episodes (including Lucy having her baby I love Lucy in 1953, which attracted an estimated 44 million viewers) or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan (73 million viewers in 1964), which was in the news last week on the occasion of its anniversary. So this year’s Super Bowl numbers are truly “a leap, not a leap” in their increase of 8.29 million viewers, Thompson says.
Which brings us to the Swift factor — and whether the pop superstar from Chiefs star Travis Kelce has gotten more people to tune in, which is much debated. (A poll from consumer research firm Numerator found that 20% of 2024 Super Bowl viewers said they favored the Chiefs because of Kelce’s highly publicized relationship, according to Variety.)
“Because I resisted the idea that the Taylor Swift effect could be that big, I think we need to take that into account,” he says. “It’s the biggest jump in a long time.”
Meanwhile, Usher headlining the halftime show undoubtedly helped boost viewership as well. The singer sang and roller skated on stage at Allegiant Stadium with special guests including Alicia Keys, Jermaine Dupri, HER, will.i.am, Lil Jon and Ludacris. Usher also got married this weekend in Las Vegas.
As of Tuesday afternoon, there are no specific breakout songs from his side of the show. Nielsen is expected to release more figures.