Early viewing numbers for Super Bowl LVIII indicate that about 39 million U.S. households tuned into the big game, up 6% from the 2023 Super Bowl.
The early numbers from the game, in which the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime, are from researcher Samba TV which says these numbers represent both broadcast and streaming. According to Nielsen's final numbers, the 2023 Super Bowl matchup between the Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles drew an average of 115.1 million viewers across all platforms.
Nevertheless, Samba's figures represent the highest Super Bowl TV viewership in the past six years and the third most viewed of all time. Usher and co.’s halftime show attracted 30.1 million households, up 5% from Rhianna’s 2023 event. The audience for the game skewed towards white households—5% compared to the U.S. overall— and older baby boomers (65-74), 6% compared to the U.S. overall.
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The most viewed commercials, all attracting 29.1 million U.S. households, were for Poppi, an upscale next generation soda, the first Verizon commercial (featuring Tony Hale and lemons, although the company’s second ad featuring Beyonce had far more impact), and an ad from Snapchat.
“There were several factors driving unprecedented buzz for the big game, from the record-breaking ad spend to the Taylor Swift effect," said Ashwin Navin, Co-Founder and CEO of Samba TV. "Following Apple Music’s first successful halftime show last year, it found success with fans yet again with an impressive 30.1 million viewers, exceeding last year’s Rhianna-led show Overall, the halftime show drew in 5% more viewers than last year.”
All was not so well on the streaming end, with numerous fans voicing their frustration over buffering and dropout issues with Paramount+, which carried the game live. Promising 4K HDR is one thing, delivering it is another and whether or not that demand for higher bandwidth was the culprit, the streaming service came up short according to the Twitterverse:
3rd time and the game hasn’t started yet #ParamountPlus @paramountplus pic.twitter.com/ACw0HG8CAcFebruary 11, 2024
Crashes began accumulating approximately an hour and a half before the scheduled 6:30 start, according to DownDetector:
Although viewers had alternative streaming options from YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, DirecTV Stream, or Fubo, Paramount+’s feeds (with all its issues), had the briefest lag time of all the streamers, running 42.73 seconds behind the live feed, according to research company Phenix, which annually tracks streaming performance for the big game. Fubo TV, which carried CBS' exclusive live feed of the game, registered the worst lagtime, averaging 86.75 seconds.
Lag time for all of the streams were up from 2023, according to Phenix.
“This is the fifth year we’ve conducted our Super Bowl latency study, and unfortunately nothing has changed—the industry has yet to catch up with consumer demand to provide a real-time experience," said Roy Reichbach, CEO of Phenix, in a statement.
And in case anyone cares, during CBS's four hour and 20 minute broadcast of the game, starting at 5:30 p.m., Taylor Swift appeared on camera 12 times for a total of 53 seconds.
