Despite some technical glitches that impacted some a batch of viewers during the early phases Super Bowl 50 on Sunday, CBS said its live stream of the big game drew 3.96 million unique viewers across laptops, desktops, tablets, connected TV devices and mobile phones.
CBS added that viewers consumed more than 402 million total minutes of coverage, and watched for more than 101 minutes each on average.
Among other stats, viewers consumed more than 315 million minutes of coverage during the game window, with an average minute audience of 1.4 million.
By comparison, the CBS Super Bowl telecast averaged 111.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen’s fast nationals, and peaked at 115.5 million between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET.
CBS’s live stream of Super Bowl 50 was offered at CBSSports.com (for PCs and tablets), the CBS Sports app for iPad, Android and Windows 10 tablets, the CBS Sports app Amazon Fire TV devices, Android TV, Apple TV, Roku players and Roku TVs, the Google Chromecast adapter, and Xbox One. Verizon also offered it on smartphones via the NFL Mobile app.
NBC Sports Live Extra’s live stream of the New England Patriots’ 28-24 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in last year’s big game averaged 800,000 viewers per minute, 1.3 million concurrent users, and 2.5 million uniques. Yahoo’s live stream of last October’s regular season matchup between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Buffalo Bills drew 15.2 million unique viewers. Yahoo streamed that game to most regions of the world, but the game was also available on regular TV (via CBS) in the local Buffalo and Jacksonville markets.
Some Apple TV users trying to live-stream Super Bowl 50 reported issues during the early part of the game. The CBSSports Help Team Twitter handle acknowledged at the time that it ironing out streaming issues for the third-gen Apple TV platform.
