Call me stunned. With a 43-8 blowout and a game over in the first half, I thought there was no chance that Super Bowl XLVIII would break Super Bowl XLVI’s viewership record of 111.3 million people. Instead, people stayed to watch and with some commercials running late in the game that had generated some social media buzz, Fox saw an average of 111.5 million viewers making it the most-watched program in U.S. television history.
The rating for the game was a 46.4 and the share was 69 and that is the same as Super Bowl XLVII on CBS last year.
It means that with live programming and not much competition (maybe Downton Abbey and Sherlock on CBS), Fox had the entire TV landscape to itself.
The Fox Super Bowl pregame show had a 12.0/22 and averaged a stunning 23.1 million viewers making it the most-watched pregame in 12 years.
And the halftime show featuring Bruno Mars with the Red Hot Chili Peppers averaged 115.3 million viewers breaking the viewership record set by Madonna in Super Bowl XLVI.
Imagine if we had a close game and it had been snowing, the numbers could have been much higher.
Here’s Fox’s celebratory press release.
SUPER BOWL XLVIII ON FOX IS MOST-WATCHED TELEVISION SHOW IN U.S. HISTORY
111.5 Million Viewers Watch on Average;
New Record Surpasses 111.3 for Super Bowl XLVI
FOX SUPER BOWL SUNDAY is Most-Watched Super Bowl Pregame Show since Post-9/11
Game is Also Most-Viewed Live Stream Ever for Single Sports EventNew York – The Seattle Seahawks dominant performance in Super Bowl XLVIII, defeating the Denver Broncos 43-8, the largest margin of victory in a Super Bowl in 21 years, was watched by an average audience of 111.5 million people, more than any television program in U.S. history, surpassing the previous mark of 111.3 million set by a much more closely contested Super Bowl XLVI (New York Giants-New England Patriots) on NBC. The game is also now the most-watched program ever on FOX, breaking the 111.0 million viewer mark the network set for Super Bowl XLV (Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers). Three of the last four Super Bowls set average viewership records.
Super Bowl XLVIII posted a 46.4/69, matching the household rating and share for Super Bowl XLVII (Baltimore-San Francisco) a year ago, according to fast national figures issued today by Nielsen, and both, along with Super Bowl XVIII and XIX tie, as the seventh highest-rated Super Bowls ever.
Interest in the game, the first Super Bowl ever played in an outdoor, cold-weather location, and the nation’s No. 1 media market, was unprecedented. The rating at kickoff, 44.5/70, ranks as the highest on record, and +12% over the kickoff rating a year ago, suggesting that a more competitive game would have resulted in even higher viewership. Ratings climbed through the first half and peaked at a 47.9/71 from 7:30-8:00 PM ET as Seattle established a commanding 22-0 halftime lead. Viewership remained impressively high through the fourth quarter despite the fact that Seattle had the game well in hand. The game earned a 44.0/63 from 9:30-conclusion, meaning that even in the closing minutes the rating was only 5% lower than it was for the entire game.
The record-breaking trend also extended to the SUPER BOWL XLVIII HALFTIME SHOW, with 115.3 million viewers watching Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers perform. That figure surpasses the 110.8 million delivered by Beyonce last year and the prior record of 114.0 million set by Madonna two years ago.
Live coverage of Super Bowl XLVIII was also available in the U.S. on a Spanish language channel, FOX Deportes, for the first time ever and on digital platforms via FOX Sports GO and FOXSports.com. FOX Deportes averaged 561,000 viewers, the most-watched non-soccer sports event in Spanish cable history. The live stream averaged 528,000 viewers to become the most-watched live stream of a single sports event in history. The contributions of FOX Deportes and the new media outlets raise total viewing of the Super Bowl on an average minute basis to 112.6 million viewers. (Streaming information reported by Adobe Analytics.)
Locally, Kansas City led all markets with a 58.1/78, followed by Seattle (56.7/92, the market’s best Super Bowl performance ever), Indianapolis (53.9/74), New Orleans (53.2/72), Tulsa (52.9/71), Las Vegas (52.5/75), Portland (52.4/82), Knoxville (52.3/68), Jacksonville (52.0/68) while Denver (51.4/83) and Tampa (51.4/71) round out the Top 10. Host market New York delivered a 50.5, its best Super Bowl rating since 1987 (Super Bowl XXI: Giants vs. Broncos, 53.4).
The SUPER BOWL PREGAME SHOW rose to a 12-year high by averaging a 12.0/22 and 23.1 million viewers from 2:00 PM to kickoff (6:33 PM ET). Yesterday’s 12.0/22 is a +20% improvement over last year’s 10.0/20 for CBS’s Super Bowl pregame, and pregame viewing peaked at a 31.1/52 and 68.4 million viewers from 6:00 PM ET to kickoff.
Super Bowl XLVIII Sunday goes down as one of the biggest nights of prime time in FOX history. FOX’s prime time (7:00 – 11:00 PM ET) averaged 94.6 million viewers, the second most-watched night in FOX’s 27-year history (2/6/11, the night of Super Bowl XLV, 100.9 million viewers). In addition to the Super Bowl itself, FOX got powerful performances from the Super Bowl post-game show (65.4 million) NEW GIRL (25.8 million) and BROOKLYN NINE-NINE (14.8 million). FOX Research now projects that when final Sunday numbers for all networks become available tomorrow, FOX will leap past NBC to take over the top spot in the 2013-14 Adults 18-49 ratings race season to date. FOX is projected to average a 2.9 for the season-to-date in Adults 18-49 to NBC’s 2.8.
Social media was ablaze before, during and after Super Bowl XLVIII with 25.3 million total tweets composed by 5.6 million authors. The most active moments during the game were Percy Harvin’s kickoff return for a touchdown to start the second half (429,000 tweets), the conclusion of the Bruno Mars/Red Hot Chili Peppers halftime performance (424,000) and MVP Malcolm Smith’s interception return for a touchdown (300,000). Following the game, activity about the Super Bowl peaked at over 500,000 tweets shortly after 10:00 PM ET.
Super Bowl XLVIII caps a history-making year in the two-decade history of FOX Sports. Over the last 12 months FOX has posted viewership increases for every one of its marquee events including the Daytona 500, MLB All-Star Game, League Championship Series, World Series, Big Ten Championship, NFL regular season, NFC Playoffs and now the single most-watched show of all time, Super Bowl XLVIII, with all of this coming alongside successful launches of FOX Sports 1, FOX Sports 2, and FOX Sports Go.
That’s is it.
