Super Bowl LVII wasn’t the most-watched edition of the game. Until it was.
And, officially, it is.
Via Michael McCarthy of FrontOfficeSports.com, updated figures from Nielsen have moved the audience from 113 million to 115.1 million.
Via McCarthy, the bump comes from a review by Nielsen that exposed “irregularities in the encoding.” Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal adds that a portion of the audience accidentally was assigned to NFL Network, along with an issue regarding out-of-home figures. Each wrinkle accounted for another million viewers.
The prior record belonged to Super Bowl XLIX, which drew 114.4 million to NBC for Patriots-Seahawks.
The four Super Bowls between Super Bowl LI through Super Bowl LVI fell under 110 million, with a low-water mark of 99.67 million for Super Bowl LV. That number rebounded the following year, with an audience of 112.3 million for Rams-Bengals.
The Super Bowl has become the most-watched annual TV event, by far. Nothing else even comes close to it -- other than other NFL games.
It underscore the power of the NFL to do something nothing else can do. Bring together a live audience in the same place at the same time.
