Super Bowl LVII is third most-watched in history

Fox was hoping the matchup of two top teams in the Super Bowl and a close game would lead to a record night.

Even though Sunday’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles came down to a field goal with 8 seconds remaining, Fox fell just short of its goal.

The Chiefs’ rally to defeat the Eagles 3835 was the third most-watched television show in history, with an average of 113.1 million people watching, according to final numbers released Tuesday by Nielsen.

The total includes the broadcasts on Fox and Fox Deportes as well as streaming on Fox and the NFL’s digital sites. The figures are via Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

The 2015 game between New England and Seattle on NBC holds the record at 114,442,000 viewers (not including streaming), followed by Super Bowl 51 in 2017 on Fox between Atlanta and New England (113,668,000).

This was Fox’s 10th Super Bowl since it began airing NFL games in 1994 and the second most-watched program in Fox Sports history.

It is a slight increase over the 112.3 million average for last year’s Super Bowl. The Los Angeles Rams’ victory over the Cincinnati Bengals was broadcast by NBC and Telemundo and streamed on Peacock and NFL digital sites.

The Fox average this year of 112,173,000 marked the first time in three years the TV-only audience was above 100 million. It was also an 11.6% increase over NBC’s average from last year. It is the first time since 2015 there have been two straight years of increases.

According to Adobe Analytics, this year’s digital feed averaged a Super Bowlrecord 7 million streams, an 18% increase over last year (6 million) and more than double Fox’s last Super Bowl in 2020 (3.4 million).

It was the third straight year the streaming average has surpassed 5 million. The first Super Bowl to be streamed, in 2012, averaged 346,000.