Big Game TV Ratings Not So Super

There were 17 Super Bowl records set in Sunday night’s thriller between the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots, but the size of the audience wasn’t one of them, reports The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ Graphic

The Eagles’ 41-33 nail-biter win over the Patriots in Super Bowl LII averaged 103.4 million viewers on NBC, according to Nielsen, making it the least-watched football championship since 2009.

This year’s ratings marked a 7.1% drop from last year’s 111.3 million people who saw the Patriots beat the Atlanta Falcons in overtime on Fox. The record Super Bowl audience was set at 114.4 million when the Patriots defeated the Seattle Seahawks in 2015 on NBC.

The decline in viewership for the Super Bowl is in line with declines the National Football League experienced during the regular season. The average audience for an NFL game for the 2017 season was 14.9 million viewers, a nearly 10% decline from the 2016 regular season, which was down 8% compared with 2015. Ratings for the playoffs this season were also down.

Despite this year’s decline, the Super Bowl still draws by far the biggest audience on television, making it a coveted program for advertisers who shelled out more than $5 million for 30 seconds of commercial time during the big game. This year’s Super Bowl ranks as the 10th most-watched program in U.S. television history, behind eight other Super Bowls and the finale of “M.A.S.H.,” according to NBC. NFL games in general remain incredibly popular, accounting for 33 of the top 50 programs on television in 2017, according to the league.

Sunday night’s audience peaked at 112.3 million viewers late in the fourth quarter. The Patriots had only trailed by one point with less than three minutes on the clock.