The Big Game: Beyond the Numbers

The Big Game’s Big numbers:

Super Bowl 57 - like previous Super Bowls - was a dominant one-of-a-kind programming event. The Super Bowl consistently ranks as the most viewed telecast of the calendar year. Despite only being less than two months into 2023, Super Bowl LVII is once again on track to earn the #1 spot. Fans across the nation viewed a combined 226.2M hours of the Super Bowl, or nearly 25.8K years of content.

The telecast earned an average live audience of 60M households throughout its 3.5-hour runtime, peaking at the end of the fourth quarter as the Chiefs made their game-winning drive. The big game’s telecast earned a live household rating of 61.9, or roughly three of every five households. Fans couldn’t look away from the screen either, with viewers watching an average 69% of the telecast – tied for the second-largest retained audience percentage of the last six years.

Game Timeline:

The average audience increased by nearly 10M from kickoff through the end of the first half. The audience dipped slightly towards the beginning of the halftime break, but increased throughout, and began the second half with an average audience of 66.9M. The average audience increased again throughout the second half, and peaked within the final minutes, throughout Kansas city’s game-winning drive, as average audiences reached 74.0M households.

Zooming in: Philadelphia vs. Kansas City Off the Field

Like their football team on the field, the Kansas City television market outperformed the live rating national average this year by 18% with a 73.3 household rating.

Philadelphia also outperformed the national average until the end of the game as Kansas City mounted their second-half comeback – at which point tune-out rates were much higher compared to Kansas City and the nation as a whole.

Kansas City and Philadelphia weren’t the only cities with their eyes glued to the big game. Fans in the Phoenix Market earned the highest live HH rating – with nearly 74% of households tuned in throughout the telecast. This is likely thanks to the big game itself being played at State Farm Stadium in their own backyard.

Despite being eliminated by Kansas City in the divisional championship, fans in Cincinnati couldn’t help but watch the big game either, earning ratings in line with those of the Philadelphia market.

The Super Bowl Viewer

The Super Bowl for All

In recent years, the NFL has made it a goal to expand the sport’s reach globally, and to share America’s largest sport with people around the world. In recent years this has taken the form of games being played in Germany, England, and Mexico. However, aside from this international push, the league has begun to put an emphasis on Spanish language telecasts within the United States as well. Since 2019, the Super Bowl has been telecast across FOX Deportes, ESPN Deportes, and Telemundo.

With Super Bowl LVII being broadcast by FOX nationally, FOX Deportes had exclusive coverage and commentary of the big game for Spanish-speaking audiences. This special telecast earned a live HH rating of 0.6 and 621.3K viewers across the country.

Despite earning a 0.6 rating with Spanish-speaking audiences nationally, many markets across the country earned significantly higher live HH ratings, such as Midland-Odessa, TX in which nearly 1 in 10 households viewed the big game on FOX Deportes with a 9.9 rating. Other Texas markets including Amarillo, and Tyler-Longview also earned ratings within the top three markets for FOX Deportes.

Spanish-speaking audiences tended not to stay on one channel though, with nearly 41.6% of the audience viewing the big game on FOX Deportes as well as on FOX (English.) Of this bi-lingual audience, only 5.5% displayed viewing across multiple set top boxes in the home, showing that although the telecast was viewed across both English and Spanish-speaking telecasts, the co-viewing can be overwhelmingly attributed to channel switching, as opposed to multiple TVs in the home.

Football or Fútbol?

Just as American football is aiming to expand worldwide, it is becoming apparent that many American football fans are becoming fans of the world’s largest sport – soccer. The FIFA World Cup of 2022 was the first time since 2014 that the United States National Team qualified for the World Cup, and live household ratings for the 2022 World Cup Final were greater than those of all 2018 World Cup games.

Just as Spanish-speaking fans tuned in to watch this year’s big game, they also showed support across World Cup games on Telemundo, in particular for the World Cup Final between France and Argentina. Of the audience who viewed Super Bowl LVII on FOX Deportes in any aspect, 44.2% also viewed the World Cup Final on Telemundo. Similarly, of the audience who viewed Super Bowl LVII exclusively on FOX Deportes, 43.5% viewed the World Cup Final exclusively on Telemundo.