Super Bowl 58, the final game of the latest NFL season drew record UK viewership for an edition of American football’s showpiece event.
The game, which saw the Kansas City Chiefs defeat the San Francisco 49ers in an overtime victory, collectively averaged over 1 million viewers in the UK across free-to-air and pay-tv offerings, greater than any other edition of the game in the country.
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Free-to-air broadcaster ITV drew an average of 555,000, an increase of 18% on Super Bowl 57’s viewership on the channel, while pay-tv giant Sky drew an average of 514,000 viewers, which is up 49% on last year’s event.
Viewership across both ITV and Sky Sports peaked early into the game's first quarter at 1.73 million viewers just before midnight UK time.
The event proved extremely popular among the NFL’s target demographic of under-35s, with a 91% year-on-year growth of viewership in the age band despite the fact the time difference between Las Vegas and the UK that the game lasted into the early hours of the morning in the country.
NFL UK general manager Henry Hodgson stated of the high viewership: ““The viewership, combined with the social engagement through Super Bowl week, is a testament to the growth of the NFL in the U.K., particularly among the youth demographic that we’ve targeted this season.”
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By GlobalDataSocial media engagements with NFL accounts reached record numbers across the week leading up to the Super Bowl, including a cumulative 23.6 million video views.
The Super Bowl’s record viewership in the UK mirrored record figures in the US, where its 123.4 million average viewership tally by the CBS network made it the most watched tv event since records began.
The total viewership figure was comprised of all TV broadcasts including CBS, CBS Sports, Spanish-language channel Univision, the alternate broadcast on children's channel Nickelodeon, and the Paramount+ and NFL+ streaming services.
On CBS alone, however, the total tally of viewership still stood at 120 million, which is the largest audience in history for a TV show on a single network.
The combination of two widely supported teams, the fact the game went to a highly-tense overtime period, as well as each side’s star-studded offenses, were likely factors in drawing such high viewership for Super Bowl 58, as was the media frenzy around pop-star Taylor Swift’s presence at the game.
