Turns out people will tune into the Super Bowl even if it’s a blowout.
Sunday’s game on Fox between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs saw an estimated 127.7 million viewers across linear and streaming, according to Nielsen, making it not only the largest big-game audience in TV history but also the largest audience for a single-network telecast in TV history.
Fox-owned streaming platform Tubi, which streamed the Super Bowl for free this year, saw an average minute audience of 13.6 million and hit a peak of 15.5 million concurrent streams, according to the company.
Across all of Tubi’s game-day programming, which included a red-carpet event hosted by Olivia Culpo, Tubi recorded 24 million unique viewers, the streamer said.
“Tubi started as a scrappy underdog in streaming,” Anjali Sud, Tubi’s CEO, wrote in a company release about the figures. “This is a full-circle moment as we achieve new levels of scale and cultural resonance with viewers.”
About 4 million more people tuned in to the game than last year, when an average of 123.7 million viewers tuned in to watch the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime across CBS channels and on Paramount+. Overall, viewership was up 3% year over year.
Crystal clear: Tubi’s livestream didn’t appear to suffer any major issues, unlike some other streams from platforms that have also recently leaned into live sports. The stream was relatively smooth, despite a small handful of complaints on X from users who had technical issues, according to streaming analyst Dan Rayburn, who liveblogged the stream.
Underdog no more? Tubi’s been scaling considerably since its acquisition by Fox in 2020. As of last month, it counted 97 million monthly active users, and the company said its users streamed more than 10 billion hours of programming last year. Earlier this month, the streamer released its first scripted series, a comedy called The Z-Suite that stars Lauren Graham as an advertising exec, and it has introduced content initiatives like Stubios, a production program focused on cultivating creators.
Get marketing news you’ll actually want to read
Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.
Read the full article here
