Cue the confetti. The Kansas City Chiefs aren’t the only ones with something to celebrate after Sunday night’s victory over the Philadelphia Eagles during Super Bowl LVII.
The telecast, which was broadcast on Fox and also aired on digital platforms, averaged 113M viewers, according to early Nielsen data. That makes it the most-watched Super Bowl in six years, since 2017’s Patriots vs. Falcons matchup, which also aired on Fox.
The audience shot up to 118.7M viewers during Rihanna‘s Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, which is the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show since Katy Perry’s performance in 2015 and second most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance on record.
Super Bowl LVII took place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. The game kicked off at 3:30 p.m. PT/6:30 p.m. ET. The audience for Sunday’s game is up slightly year-over-year, from 112.3M that tuned in on NBC and NBC digital platforms for last year’s matchup between the L.A. Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals.
Fox also gets bragging rights for beating their own viewership results from the last time the network hosted the Super Bowl in 2019. That year, the Chiefs’ 31-20 victory over the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday in Super Bowl LIV in Miami drew 102 million viewers. This year’s audience was also up significantly from the last time that Eagles appeared in the Super Bowl (and won) in 2018, when 103.4M watched.
On digital, Fox says Super Bowl LVII was the most-streamed Super Bowl in history, with about 7M streams. That’s up 18% over last year and 103% over Fox’s last Super Bowl stream in 2020, which had about 3.4M viewers.
Fox Deportes also set a record Sunday for the most-watched Super Bowl game in Spanish-language cable television history with 951,000 people tuning in. That’s up 25% from Deportes’ viewership in 2020. The telecast is now the most watched non-soccer event in Spanish-language cable history.
Super Bowl LVII was expected to draw impressive viewership, considering the NFL had a good season overall in terms of ratings. The regular season delivered record-breaking numbers across Fox, NBC and CBS.
Last month, the NFC and AFC Championships drew strong audiences, with the telecast of the Chiefs vs. Bengals matchup scoring CBS the most-watched NFL conference championship game in four years.The matchup was up 11% over last year’s AFC title game with 53.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched TV program on any network since Super Bowl LVI (until now, of course).