TV Ratings: Super Bowl Slumps

The New England Patriots prevailed, 13-3, in a war of attrition against the Los Angeles Rams in Sunday’s National Football League championship that averaged 100.7 million viewers across CBS’s TV and digital platforms, according to Nielsen, making it the least-watched Super Bowl since 2009.

According to The Wall Street Journal, this year’s comparatively meager ratings befitted the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in history. They were lower than last year’s audience of 103.5 million people who watched the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Patriots in a 41-33 squeaker.

The highest-rated Super Bowl was in 2015, when the Patriots’ victory over the Seattle Seahawks drew 114.4 million viewers on NBC.

For the NFL, it marks a disappointing finale to a season where viewership had rebounded. Before Sunday’s game, ratings had risen by 9% during the playoffs and 5% during the regular season. NFL executives had attributed the ratings revival to improved quality of play and up-and-coming stars; the resurgence also coincided with a lower profile for the league’s controversial commissioner, the oft-booed Roger Goodell.

Despite its smaller overall size, the audience for the Super Bowl still dwarfs those of other televised events, and advertisers including Amazon.com Inc., Anheuser-Busch InBev SA and PepsiCo Inc. were willing to fork more than $5 million for 30 seconds of airtime to market their products.

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Although much of TV viewing has shifted online, Sunday night’s game did appear to steal some market share from newer streaming services. In a tweet, Netflix called the Super Bowl “kind of a big deal,” saying its U.S. viewership was down 32% compared with a typical Sunday.

Despite the ratings slump, traditional TV networks and tech juggernauts alike are still willing to shell out big bucks for the rights to show NFL games.

According to Nielsen, there were 32.3 million social media interactions across official Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts and fan Twitter accounts about Super Bowl LIII on CBS on Feb. 3, 2019.

The top social minute of the telecast on Twitter occurred at 8:23 ET p.m., during which 171,000 Twitter interactions were sent as fans reacted to the halftime show performance wrapping up. The second most social minute occurred after the game at 10:09 ET p.m., during which 102,000 Twitter interactions were sent discussing the Patriots’ victory over the Rams. The third most social moment occurred at 9:34 ET p.m., when nearly 74,000 Twitter interactions were sent about the Patriots scoring the first touchdown of the night.

The New England Patriots’ social media accounts generated 5 million interactions across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, 76% of their engagement came from their Instagram handle. In comparison, the Los Angeles Rams saw 630,000 interactions across their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts, with 73% of their engagement coming from their Instagram handle.