Sunday night’s Super Bowl has become the most watched TV program of this generation.
Setting a record high, the big game — which saw the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime — brought in an audience of 123.4 million, according to figures from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. The number is close to the all-time-record held by the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, which had a whopping 125 to 150 million estimated viewers.
Viewership was seven percent up from last year’s game, when 115.1 million people watched Kansas City take home the victory.
The record-breaking game was watched across a number of networks and streaming platforms: CBS, Paramount+ (despite that crash), Univision, CBS Sports, and NFL digital properties including NFL+. The majority of viewers — 112 million of them — tuned into CBS, accounting for the largest audience ever for a single network.
Nielsen also announced the number of people who viewed any portion of the game: 204 million, up 10 percent from last year.
This year’s Super Bowl may have gotten more attention than usual, for reasons ranging from Taylor Swift’s relationship with Kansas Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce to Beyoncé announcing an upcoming album to Usher’s cameo-filled halftime show to the game itself going into overtime.
