Viewing of the Super Bowl edged up 0.5% to 36.7 million households from 36.5 million households a year ago, according to early figures from Samba TV, one of a number of measurement companies likely to weigh in on the big game.
The halftime show featuring Rihanna and sponsored by Apple Music was down slightly, viewed by 28.5 million households, off 0.7% compared to 28.7 million a year ago.
“Super Bowl 57 had a number of historic firsts that combined to make this year’s big game the most watched since 2020 with more than one in four American households tuning in,“ Samba TV founder and CEO Ashwin Navin said. “More than thirty-six and a half million homes watched the Chief’s come from behind victory over the Eagles, surpassing last year’s viewership by nearly half a percent.
“As we are seeing with almost all of linear television today, while the price of advertising continues to increase — in the case of the Super Bowl by nearly 10% per ad since last year alone — audience reach is not keeping up as this year’s slight year-over-year viewership increase demonstrates,” Navin said.
“Rihanna’s star power has only continued to grow since her last tour and album release more than half a decade ago,” he added. “Apple Music’s visually stunning halftime show drew in an impressive 28 and a half million viewers, falling just short of last year's star-studded show featuring the biggest names in rap music history including Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige. Overall, the halftime show drew in about a quarter of a percent fewer viewers than last year.”
Chiefs fans pushed Kansas City to become the highest over-indexing market in the U.S., surpassing the national average by 20%. Hometown Eagles fans followed closely behind, with Philadelphia over-indexing the national average by 15%.
Samba TV analyzes audiences based on its U.S. TV panel, which pulls viewing data from about 25 million connected TVs, measuring both linear TV consumption as well as streaming. Samba TV said its panel is 80 times larger than Nielsen’s, allowing for far more granular analysis matched to the U.S. Census. ■
