Super Bowl LIV drew 102 million viewers on Sunday, counting Fox, Fox Deportes and Fox’s, the NFL’s and Verizon’s digital properties. A(nother) postseason comeback victory by the Kansas City Chiefs kept eyeballs glued to the screen.
Fox’s broadcast channel racked up 99.9 million of the 102 million. Spanish-language channel Fox Deportes added 757,000 viewers.
Super Bowl LIV had a 41.6 household rating, and was watched in an average of 50.2 million homes. That’s 69% of the homes that had televisions in use at the time.
Sunday’s all-in audience was about 1.3% higher than 2019’s comparable number. The 102-million tally, which is an average, made yesterday’s contest the 10th most-watched Super Bowl in history.
Shakira and Jennifer Lopez’s halftime performance averaged 103 million viewers. That was up 4% from last year’s comparable statistic.
Last year’s Super Bowl LIII received 98.2 million viewers on CBS alone, according to Nielsen, marking the first time since 2009 the big game hadn’t surpassed 100 million viewers. Counting streaming, the 2019 game tallied 100.7 million viewers. Those numbers were (both) down 5% from Super Bowl LII.
The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, 31-20. Read our full game recap here.
Super Bowl LIV took place in Miami, Florida, with the Chiefs representing the AFC and 49ers the NFC. San Fran had finished the regular season at 13-3; Kansas City was 12-4.
This was the first Super Bowl win for the Chiefs in 50 years. It was the first for head coach Andy Reid, who previously coached the Philadelphia Eagles.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes would shake off a rocky start and go on to become the game’s MVP. Each year, the Super Bowl is the MVP among all TV shows. The Oscars, which air on ABC this coming Sunday, will finish runner-up.
The 2020 Super Bowl kicked off at 6:41 p.m. ET/3:41 p.m. PT. It ended at roughly 10:11 p.m. ET/7:11 p.m. PT.
Fox’s Season 3 premiere of “The Masked Singer” followed last night’s Super Bowl. Read that recap — including the big reveal of who donned the Robot costume — here.
“The Masked Singer” posted 23.7 million viewers and an 8.1 rating among adults 18-49. Not surprisingly, those numbers mark the unscripted series’ highest rating and largest audience of all time. They were improvements from last year’s debut of “The World’s Best” on CBS.