EuToch
Watching the Super Bowl might be back in fashion. Sunday Fox (NASDAQ: FOX) (NASDAQ: FOXA) telecast of Super Bowl LVII drew an average of 113 million viewers, up about 1% from NBC’s 2022 telecast.
Last year’s game, of course, is rebound from the 2021 game, which had the lowest Super Bowl rating in 13 years. In the 2021 game, they played against the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, while last year they played the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals.
On Sunday, the Chiefs returned to the game to face the Philadelphia Eagles, and (as such things affect ratings) the game was close, until the Chiefs’ game-winning shot in the final minute for a 38-35 victory.
The current flash numbers measure viewership on Fox, Fox Deportes and various Fox and National Football League digital properties. Last year brought a change in how streaming is measured, counting people where the previous year they counted devices.
This year’s game also drew interest for its halftime show, featuring pop star Rihanna’s first public appearance in five years (who featured something of a surprise new pregnancy reveal). Fox recorded when ratings peaked, with an average of 118.7 million viewers.
If the story of this year’s Super Bowl ads was unique, it was the continued power of celebrity. We saw an attention-grabbing appearance by John Travolta for T-Mobile ( TMUS ); Ben Affleck (and Jennifer Lopez) for Dunkin’, Steve Martin for Pepsi (PEP); Serena Williams (for Michelob Ultra (BUD) and Rémy Martin (OTCPK:REMYY)); and Meghan Trainor for Pringles, among others.
They and other advertisers will be looking to reap an abundance of viewers in the buying days ahead (even in back-to-back years, the Super Bowl ends up getting tens of millions of viewers better than the other telecast of the year).