Bucs’ rout of Chiefs earns worst Super Bowl rating since 1969
There was a relatively small crowd in the stands for Sunday’s Super Bowl and in terms of those watching on TV it wasn’t much better.
Viewership figures for Super Bowl LV were lower than any for the game since 2006, and one important metric showed the lowest number since 1969, when Joe Namath’s New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts.
The considerable star power of Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady and Kansas City Chiefs counterpart Patrick Mahomes was not enough to attract the kind of audience the NFL has enjoyed for its championship game over the past dozen years. While the Super Bowl continued to garner numbers that dwarf all other television programming, Sunday’s installment, in which the Bucs throttled the Chiefs by a 31-9 score, continued a downward trend.
In an unusual move, Nielsen delayed unveiling its ratings until Tuesday, prompting speculation that the news wasn’t good for the NFL or its advertising partners. The market measurement company eventually announced that Super Bowl LV “drew an average TV audience of about 92 million viewers.” The game also garnered a 38.2 U.S. household rating and was viewed in an average of 46.2 million homes.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
Comments
The Ohio State- Alabama National Championship game was a ratings disaster as well. Only 18.7 million watched it . The worst since 1999. Exactly half of the viewership of Texas- USC in 2006. Sign of the times
Monday night’s College Football Playoff championship game saw Alabama blast past Ohio State for its sixth National Championship in the Nick Saban era in Tuscaloosa. Unfortunately, it appears that the country was not all that interested in watching a blowout win.
According to Austin Karp of the Sports Business Journal, the National Championship game averaged 18.7 million viewers across ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU. That is the least-watched championship game since the 2005 championship game between USC and Oklahoma, when the ABC broadcast got 21.4 million viewers, according to Karp.
Additionally, Sports Media Watch provided a graphic of every viewership rating since 1999. This year’s game was the first one in that stretch that dipped below 21 million viewers. Three games in that stretch have eclipsed 30 million viewers, with the 2006 game between Texas and USC reaching as high as 35.6 million viewers.
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
Blame the weekend
Big difference. Ohio State Alabama game was on cable.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
Still the worse since 1999. Worst then last year. Worse then the year before that. Worse then the year before that. Worse then the year before that. Worse then the year before that. Worse then the year before that. Worse then the year before that. Worse then the year before that. Worse then the year before that. Worse then the year before that. Worse then the year before that.
My point was sports viewership is down as a whole plus lots of people don't watch these games on TV's anymore but they do watch
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
Well, let's face it. The commercials need to up their game. Alot of non-football people are watching on their TV for the commercials, the half time entertainment, and the hoopla. They need a few more commercials to be epic to bring in more viewers. Football itself, the game, is saturated everywhere, just a bunch of guys hitting each other, so what?
Best, SH
Commercials pre game half time and post game all sucked , plus corona
Is some of this due to "streaming"? Even if so, not all of it for sure.
Who cares how many people watched it. Brady's tram won, that's all I care about. I thought it was a great game!
Blowout game + mediocre commercials + horrible half time show = low ratings.
http://www.unisquare.com/store/brick/
Ralph
There's a considerable amount of sports fans out there who say they're never again watching another NFL game for various reasons. Without question, enough of them can contribute to a ratings decline.
I think it's a combination of that and other factors already mentioned in this thread which resulted in the ratings decline.
I have definitely come across people online and in person who said just that. Plus there are a lot more "cord cutters" who just use an antenna (like myself). Afaik, I am not included. On top of everything else, it doesn't hold the same hype, as far as I can tell, for the casual viewer who was just watching for the commercials, etc. The NFL, even in a world where their numbers are down, are still doing numbers way beyond their competitors.
We are streaming as I type. Game changer
Super Bowl 55 also had two teams in tiny markets. That's probably a small part of it as well
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
And here is the rest of the story. It was the lowest ratings since 2007. Record streaming numbers
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/super-bowl-pulls-lowest-viewership-160213198.html
Still, with 91.6 million tuning in on just CBS, the 2021 Super Bowl became the most-watched show of the past year. And on the digital side, LV was the most-livestreamed Super Bowl in history, averaging 5.7 million views per minute, a 69 percent boost from 2020, which previously set the record. Also of interest, the game saw a higher TV rating in Boston than Tampa, with 57.6 percent of all TVs in Tom Brady’s former market tuning into the event, while Tampa drew 52.3 percent.
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
NFL and NBA just don’t get it. Audiences want an escape from everyday BS. People want sports to be sports and that’s all.
Record # of my friends who ate, slept and drank the NFL stopped watching and will never be back. They watch reruns of Gilligans Island and leave the world behind. Not a bad idea IMO.
"I spent 50% of my money on alcohol, women, and gambling. The other half I wasted.
Which is hilarious because they are supporting the same thing by giving the TV network air time lol
piggybacking on previous comments, my father has watched 40 years of super bowls and the last 3 years has watched gunsmoke instead. He tells me that he can turn on the news if he wants to hear about politics etc.
small sample size, but he is not the only one.
personally, I am too big of a fan to turn it off. I also agree that streaming is cutting into ratings. it will more so in the future
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I just get too much joy out of watching the NFL to stop watching for any reason that has come up so far. I generally turn down the volume or do something else during commercials, or if my kids are there have a dialogue about what is shown. I turned the volume off and did other things during half time.
Its getting ridiculous. The Dallas mavericks has discontinued the national anthem at all their games.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
Yep, I refuse to let nonsense ruin what I enjoy.
^^^this
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Wow, I didn't know this, but I see it is now in the news. Apparently it has been gone all year and not reported. No one is there (no fans) to say anything, so who would know i guess.
I could care less that ratings are down. It doesn't effect me in the least. I could care less if people don't tune in for whatever their reason. That's their prerogative. The NFL is still the biggest game in town by a wide margin. It's probably peaked. So if the teams make less 10% less and the players make 10% less no one is going to have to create a Go Fund Me page for them.
There is a sliver of good news for the league. Even if the glass is only half full, it’s a larger glass than any other. The NFL remains the broadcast leader in America, taking the largest share of a smaller pie. It’s also worth noting that online viewership averaged 5.7 million viewers per minute, the most live-streamed NFL game ever and up nearly two-thirds from last year’s Super Bowl. Many of the fans who once watched the NFL on TV have jumped online.
m
By Jay Busbee
The ratings for the Super Bowl are in, and, well … the NFL’s going to be glad this season’s over for a whole lot of reasons.
“Only” about 91.6 million viewers watched the Super Bowl on TV this year, a 9 percent drop from last season’s 100.45 million and the lowest TV viewership since 2006 (Steelers over Seahawks). This game and Super Bowl LIII (Patriots over Rams, 98.48 million) were the only games since 2009 not to crack nine-figure TV viewership marks.
The numbers came in low even though this was one of the most anticipated matchups in Super Bowl history, with the legendary Tom Brady challenging the defending champion and would-be GOAT Patrick Mahomes. A snowstorm packed much of the country inside, and the pandemic has cut into gatherings at Super Bowl parties and sports bars. That seemed to portend good news for viewership totals … but nope.
So why did the ratings decline? Let’s run through some possible reasons:
Terrible game. Despite the megahyped matchup, this game stunk on ice. The Bucs’ margin of victory was the second-largest in a Super Bowl in 18 years, and Kansas City looked overmatched on both sides of the ball. That doesn’t give casual fans much incentive to stick around.
Pandemic fatigue. We’ve got a lot more important things to worry about than football, even the Super Bowl.
Other entertainment options. The Super Bowl isn’t the only thing to watch on TV on Super Bowl Sunday anymore, and most of the heralded ads are available well before the game (and all are online afterward).
Social justice. A percentage of fans — not as large a group as it thinks it is, but not as small as the NFL and its supporters want to believe, either — has opposed the NFL’s turn toward social justice. It’s not a monolithic boycott — that would mean all ratings would be down across the season, and some games, like the conference championships, saw significant increases over last season — but it’s a factor.
Lack of hype. The pandemic also kept thousands of media members and tens of thousands of potential Super Bowl pilgrims at home, robbing the game of its usual week-long hypefest. Stories went untold, angles un-pursued, memories un-made. The Big Game became ... just another game.
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
I have watched every Superbowl going back to Dallas Vs. Denver in 1978(I was 7 years old), except for Dallas Vs. Pittsburgh in 1996 and only missed that one because we had no electricity. It's a tradition and as long as it's played, I will watch, even if that is the only game I watch all season. I don't have a particular team that support, nor despise...but I like certain players and when those players happen to make it to the grand finale, it just adds to the excitement and I generally will pick the team I would like to see win. Some years they do, some they don't. And even though I don't collect much in the way of football cards, when those special moments happen, I will add a player or 2 to my personal collection to have a memory of the events!
It has been a strange year for sure. I think the lack of SB hype leading up to the game kept the buzz down. I bet the ratings will be down next year, but a surge in streaming.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Who cares? I like football. Don't really care if anyone else does or not.
Yep.
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......