The Super Bowl’s national TV ratings dipped this year. There are some reasons for that
The Super Bowl drew its usual massive national television ratings, but the numbers were the lowest in 15 years.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ 31-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV averaged 91.629 million TV viewers on CBS Sunday night. It marked the big game’s lowest figure since the 90.75 watched the Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Seattle Seahawks after the 2005 season.
The Chiefs-Bucs game attracted 96.4 million viewers across all platforms, including CBS and NFL digital properties and team mobile properties.
The total number of viewers fell short of last year’s Super Bowl, when more than 102 million watched on FOX or streamed live as the Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LIV.
This Super Bowl was expected to draw bigger numbers in anticipation of the quarterback matchup pitting Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady against Patrick Mahomes. Instead, the lopsided nature of the game likely contributed to lower ratings. The Chiefs scored first to lead 3-0, but the Bucs led 21-6 by halftime and were never threatened in the second half.
That was a stark contrast to last year, when the Chiefs rallied from a 10-point deficit midway through the third quarter to win by 11.
Kansas City delivered this year’s top local market rating of 59.9, which means about 600,000 TV households in the Kansas City market were tuned in to the game.