Make no mistake about it, the Super Bowl is the biggest TV event of the year—by a massive margin. Last year’s game attracted more than 101 million viewers, cementing viewership of 100 million-plus for 11 of the past 12 years. For context, the most watched new primetime program in the fall 2022 TV season attracted a viewership of 5.8 million1.
The widespread appeal of the NFL content, coupled with the growing variety of ways in which audiences engage with it, illuminates the shift to streaming that is starting to take place in sports programming—a shift that we’ve tracked across other program genres in the nearly two years since we launched 게이지. In December 2022, for example, streaming had grown to account for more than 38% of total TV usage.
Sports programming remains a fixture within the broadcast television world, yet rights deals are increasingly moving lucrative programming—including the NFL’s Thursday Night Football and all matches in the the upcoming MLS season—to streaming services. But on Super Bowl Sunday, the TV industry’s biggest day of the year, audience access isn’t limited to a single platform or technology. In fact, the magnitude of the event dictates that it’s available to audiences regardless of how they typically watch TV. Outside of the Super Bowl, however, we can see the tides are shifting, as audiences are steadily switching to smart TVs and internet-connected devices for regular season games. This will likely accelerate next season when the NFL Sunday Ticket hits YouTube TV.
Despite the overall appeal of NFL content, the hometowns of this year’s Super Bowl contenders have significantly different levels of interest in the league. In the 2022-23 season, Kansas City was one of the most engaged markets for the NFL, posting an average rating of 42.12, edged out just slightly by Buffalo, with an average rating of 45.9. Comparatively, the average rating in Philadelphia was 25.3, placing the City of Brotherly Love at No. 9 among the league’s 32 teams.
The viewership in these two league stronghold cities tracks with the interest levels of the people who live there. According to Nielsen Scarborough, just over 44%3 of Philadelphia’s residents say they are either very or somewhat interested in the NFL, with 51% saying that they watch, stream and listen to Eagles games. And when it comes to the Super Bowl, only 5.3% say they stream it.
캔자스시티 주민의 70% 미만이 NFL에 매우 또는 어느 정도 관심이 있다고 답했으며, 72% 이상이 치프스 경기를 시청, 스트리밍, 청취한다고 답했습니다. 그리고 슈퍼볼의 경우 8.5%가 스트리밍을 한다고 답했습니다.
시청 행태와 팬덤 수준은 차치하고서라도 NFL 콘텐츠, 특히 슈퍼볼은 TV에서 가장 높은 시청률을 기록하는 프로그램 중 하나입니다. 그리고 스포츠가 새로운 플랫폼과 서비스로 전환하기 시작하면서 다양한 디바이스와 플랫폼에 걸친 시청자 수는 시청률이 뒤따를 것이라는 증거로 작용합니다.
참고
- 실시간 + 당일 시청률, 닐슨 전국 TV 패널 데이터, NPOWER를 통한 닐슨 전국 패널 데이터
- NPOWER를 통한 닐슨 전국 TV 패널 데이터
- 닐슨 스카버러, 2022년 출시 2
