Nielsen Recount Declares This Year’s Super Bowl the ‘Most Watched’ in History

thewrap.com:

115.1 million people watched the Feb. 12 Super Bowl broadcast of the Kansas City Chiefs’ triumph over the Philadelphia Eagles across various traditional television, its Spanish language Fox Deportes and digital streaming services.That Nielsen Media Research figure was up by 2.1 million from the 113 million viewers initially credited to the game, which featured a last-minute win for the Patrick Mahomes-led Chiefs in one of the most exciting championship games in years.

The halftime performance by Rihanna likely helped boost viewership.“This revision is the product of a thorough review by Nielsen that revealed irregularities in the encoding that enables Nielsen’s measurement of TV viewing, as well as issues with the out-of-home measurement of Super Bowl LVII,” Fox Sports said in a statement.The additional viewers means that the game drew more eyeballs than the previous leader, 2015’s Super Bowl XLIX, which was aired by NBC and featured the Tom Brady-led New England Patriots defeating the defending champion Seattle Seahawks.The increase also meant a wider gap between the 2023 Super Bowl and the 112.3 million viewers who watched the 2022 championship game that saw the Los Angeles Rams defeat the Cincinnati Bengals.Nielsen Media Research representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the revision.This year’s Super Bowl takes the top of an all-time viewership list that is mostly populated with the big game over the years.

Of the 12 Super Bowls in the top 15, four were aired by NBC, five by Fox and and three by CBS.In contrast to the huge viewership that the Super Bowl receives, most regular scheduling draws a vastly smaller audience.