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 The Gauge. 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.
在西部地区，只有不到 70% 的堪萨斯城居民表示他们对 NFL 非常感兴趣或有点感兴趣，超过 72% 的人表示他们会观看、串流或收听酋长队的比赛。说到超级碗，8.5% 的人表示他们会通过流媒体观看。
撇开观看行为和粉丝水平不谈，NFL 内容，尤其是超级碗是电视上表现最好的节目之一。随着体育节目开始向新的平台和服务过渡，跨设备和平台的观众数量也证明了收视率会随之上升。
说明
- 直播+当日收视率；通过 NPOWER 获得的尼尔森全国电视小组数据
- 通过 NPOWER 获得的尼尔森全国电视面板数据
- 尼尔森-斯卡伯勒，2022 年第 2 版
