By Dawn Chmielewski
(Reuters) – Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast attracted an average television audience of about 101 million viewers, roughly 10% above last year’s National Football League championship, according to Nielsen data released on Tuesday.
About 99 million people watched the broadcast on NBC, owned by Comcast Corp. Another 1.9 million viewed the game on Comcast-owned Telemundo. The figure includes people who watched on televisions at home and in bars and restaurants.
This year’s contest featured quarterback Matthew Stafford leading the Los Angeles Rams to a come-from-behind 23-20 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals. It was the Rams’ first Super Bowl win in more than 20 years.
The Super Bowl typically draws the year’s biggest television audience in the United States, though viewership for the marquee NFL matchup has been dwindling since it peaked in 2015 at 114.4 million.
This year’s game outside of Los Angeles, California, required ticket holders to show proof of vaccination, or a negative COVID-19 test, and wear a mask – though the mask requirement appeared not to have been enforced.
The 70,000-plus crowd at SoFi Stadium more closely resembled pre-pandemic matchups than last year’s Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida, where attendance was limited to one-third capacity.The halftime show’s star-studded lineup, headlined by Dr. Dre and other musicians, drew in viewers who came just for the performances, according to Samba TV, a firm that gathers viewing data from internet-connected TVs.
The number of households that tuned in just to watch the performance was up 60% from 2021, according to Samba TV. Some of those viewers, who were attracted by the halftime show, stayed through the second half of the game, it found.
Super Bowl ads sold for a record $6.5 million per 30-second commercial, a price that marks an 18% increase over what ViacomCBS-owned CBS charged for them last year.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Helen Coster in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis)
