Super Bowl 60: A Big TV Hit but Slightly Short of the Record

The biggest football game of the year, Super Bowl LX, attracted a huge crowd on TV and online. NBC and its streaming partner Peacock showed the game, which ended with Seattle beating New England 29‑13. The average viewership was about 125 million people, just a little less than last year’s record of 128 million. The numbers count viewers on the main NBC channel, the Spanish Telemundo feed, and all of the NFL’s digital sites. NBC set a new peak for a single moment in the broadcast. During the second quarter, 137. 8 million people tuned in at one time. The halftime show with Bad Bunny drew even more viewers—128 million—though that was a few percent below the 134 million who watched Kendrick Lamar last year. On social media, Bad Bunny’s set was a hit, gathering 4 billion “views” in the first day. That is twice as many as the previous year’s halftime performance.The game itself ranks second in U. S. TV history, only behind last year’s Super Bowl. It was the first game measured by Nielsen’s new “big data plus panel” method, which tends to boost numbers for live events. Still, the lopsided score may have turned some people away after halftime. Telemundo’s Spanish broadcast pulled 3. 3 million viewers, the highest ever for that channel. Bad Bunny’s halftime act also set a Spanish‑language record with an average of 4. 8 million viewers. Peacock’s detailed numbers were not released right away, but NBCUniversal said the streaming service had its biggest day ever in reach and hours watched during the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, and a new series launch that was heavily promoted at kickoff. More streaming data from Nielsen will arrive later in the week. The Winter Olympics also benefited from the Super Bowl’s audience. NBCU reported that Sunday’s coverage, including a primetime show right after the game, drew 42 million cross‑platform viewers. That is the largest audience for any day of the Winter Games since 2014, and it was 73 percent higher than the same day of the 2022 Olympics.