UPDATED: The viewership for Super Bowl LII is down slightly from last year, according to Nielsen data.
With the final numbers in, the game averaged 103.4 million viewers. That is a drop off of approximately 7% from the 2017 Super Bowl, which ended up drawing 111.3 million viewers. Super Bowl LII is therefore the least-watched Super Bowl since 2009, with that year’s game drawing 98.7 million viewers. However, it still ranks as one of the 10 most-watched American television programs of all time, coming in at number 10 behind every Super Bowl from 2010 to 2017 and the series finale of “MASH.”
This year’s drop off is in keeping with ratings declines seen by the NFL this season. For the regular season, NFL games were down in the Nielsen ratings an average of 9% from last year. In addition, the viewership numbers for the AFC and NFC championship games were down approximately 8% from last year’s championship games.
In metered market households, Sunday’s game on NBC drew a 47.4 rating. Super Bowl LI in 2017 on Fox drew a 48.8 rating, meaning this year is down just 3% in that measure from last year.
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The top 10 metered markets for Super Bowl LII were: Buffalo, 56.4; Philadelphia, 56.2; Boston, 55.9; Minneapolis-St. Paul, 54.9; Pittsburgh, 54.9; Norfolk, 53.9; New Orleans, 53.0; Providence, 52.5; Milwaukee, 52.3; Seattle, 52.2; Kansas City, 52.2.
Super Bowl LII is also the most live-streamed Super Bowl ever, delivering an Average Minute Audience (AMA) of 2.02 million viewers via the NBC Sports app, NBCSports.com, NBC.com ‘TV Everywhere,’ En Vivo app, NFL.com, NFL Mobile from Verizon, the Yahoo Sports app, and go90. Last night’s live stream peaked at 3.1 million concurrent streams.
The post-Super Bowl episode of “This Is Us,” meanwhile, set a new metered market record for that show. It averaged a 16.2 rating, making it the top-rated post-Super Bowl entertainment telecast in six years, and topping the show’s prior metered market record of 9.0 by 80%. The show drew a 9.3 rating in adults 18-49 and 27 million viewers, easily marking the highest-rated episode in the show’s history. It was also the network’s most-watched scripted show in more than 13 years, and the most-watched drama on any network in 10 years.
