Super Bowl LVIII Sets New TV Record With 123.7 Million Viewers

The longest Super Bowl in history will now go down as also the most-watched program in television history.

According to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, the Kansas City Chiefs’ 25-22 overtime victory over the San Fransisco 49ers on Sunday averaged 123.7 million viewers across all television services and streaming platforms. That’s a shattering 7% increase over the 115.1 million viewers for last year’s Super Bowl, which Kansas City also won, but against a different opponent in the Philadelphia Eagles.

Apart from the NFL’s digital platforms, the game was televised on CBS through Nickelodeon, Univision and Paramount+.

Nielsen also reported that a record 202.4 million people watched at least part of the game this year, which is a 10% jump over last year’s 183.6 million. The increase can be partially attributed to Nielsen’s change in the way they count their viewers, as they expanded to counting out-of-home viewers starting this year.

Another aspect that attracted new viewers was the appearance of a certain pop-star musician Taylor Swift, who attended almost all of the Chiefs games this year as she is dating the Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce. Kelce had a slow first half but turned up in the second half and overtime for a total of nine catches and 93 yards on ten  targets.

It’s fair to say that most swifties weren’t exactly fans of the NFL before Kelce.

Super Bowl LVIII was also the second-ever Super Bowl to go to overtime. The last one was in 2017 when the New England Patriots came back from a 28-3 deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28.

As the second straight Super Bowl to average over 100 million viewers, Super Bowl LVIII has created a recent trend in America leading to more and more people watching the Super Bowl. Four of the five Super Bowls before that had fallen short of the 100 million mark.

For the first time in history, we’ve had over one-third of the country watch the Super Bowl.

Article by Nathan Weick

USports writing intern and second year student-athlete at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA pursuing BA in Professional Writing and BA in Spanish/Hispanic Cultures. Juniata College Mens Soccer Captain and former president of the Juniata College Class of 2026.