Super Bowl Ratings Lowest in More Than a Decade
by EG
Last Sunday's Super Bowl broadcast was the lowest-rated since 2008. However, the big game was still by far the highest-rated program of any kind on TV. Read on for details.
The lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever may have pushed ratings for the game down as well.
The New England Patriots' 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII averaged 98.2 million viewers on CBS. That's a 5 percent decline from the previous year (103.39 million) and the smallest TV-only audience for a Super Bowl since 2008 — "smallest" being a relative term, as nothing else in the world of Nielsen-rated TV comes even within shouting distance of the Super Bowl.
The all-in average for Sunday's game— including streaming on CBS, NFL and Verizon digital platforms and Spanish-language broadcast and streaming from ESPN Deportes — is 100.7 million. The various streams had an average minute audience of 2.6 million, up 30 percent from 2 million last year. Streaming also accounted for a slightly larger percentage of the total audience: 2.6 percent vs. 1.9 percent a year ago.
Following the game and post-game festivities, the premiere of The World's Best delivered 22.2 million viewers, at the lower end of post-Super Bowl shows over the past 20 years. The audience is about 18 percent smaller than that of NBC's This Is Us (26.98 million) after the 2018 Super Bowl.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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