Super Bowl 58, the showpiece finale of the latest season of American football’s NFL, has drawn the largest recorded TV audience in US history.
The game, held at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, was broadcast on the Paramount-owned national network CBS, and drew an average of 123.4 million viewers, far above the previous record of 115.1 million set by Fox’s broadcast of Super Bowl 57 in 2023. The total viewership figure was comprised of all TV broadcasts including CBS, CBS Sports, Spanish-language channel Univision, the alternate broadcast on children's channel Nickelodeon, and the Paramount+ and NFL+ streaming services.
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On CBS alone, however, the total tally of viewership still stood at 120 million, which is the largest audience in history for a TV show on a single network.
The combination of two widely supported teams, the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs (the Chiefs won 25-22 in overtime) the fact the game went to a highly-tense overtime period, as well as each side’s star-studded offenses, were likely factors in drawing such high viewership for Super Bowl 58, as was the media frenzy around pop-star Taylor Swift’s presence at the game.
The CBS 120 million tally, however, includes out-of-home viewership, a facet that was not typically calculated before the mid-to-late 2010s, meaning it is likely that other Super Bowls with similarly high viewership notched before the calculation of out-of-home viewership. Specifically, the 112 million official viewership of Super Bowl 51 – which is believed to stretch to as much as 124 million – would surpass 58’s total.
CBS last broadcast the Super Bowl in 2021, when it aired Super Bowl 55, which at 91.6 million English-language viewers was the lowest-watched Super Bowl since 2006.
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By GlobalDataCBS next holds the rights to broadcast the Super Bowl in February 2028, when it will broadcast Super Bowl 62 at the end of the 2027 season. Fox, NBC, and ABC/ESPN respectively will broadcast the next three editions of the end-of-season showpiece finale.
The record viewership tally serves as the culmination of a season of abnormally strong viewership for the NFL.
The championship round that decided the two Super Bowl participants recorded soaring year-on-year viewership, with the AFC Championship game seeing its highest viewership on record, and the NFC championship game averaging even more viewers than that.
The divisional round of the playoffs achieved its highest average viewership since records began, with an average of 40 million viewers across its four matches.
