Fox was the big winner during Super Bowl 57.
Ratings for Sunday’s matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, a game that came down to a last-second field goal kick, reached an average audience of 113 million. That accounts for viewing across linear through Fox and Fox Deportes as well as digitally on Fox and NFL properties.
With those numbers—106 million on linear and 7 million streaming—the game was the most-watched Super Bowl since 2017 on Fox, per Nielsen Media Research Fast National data and Adobe Analytics, with final Nielsen data coming. Overall, 182.6 million viewers watched all or part of Super Bowl 57. And in primetime viewership across all networks, the game received a 40.0/77 household rating/share.
The numbers slightly beat NBC’s 2022 telecast, which averaged 112.3 million across all linear and streaming platforms, according to Nielsen and NBCUniversal.
Fox’s last run at the Super Bowl, 2020’s pre-pandemic matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers, drew a total audience of 113.4 million, with 100.4 million watching on linear.
Among the other highlights, the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, starring Rihanna, drew an average of 118.7 million viewers, making it the most-watched since Katy Perry’s performance in 2015, according to Fox.
The game was the most-streamed Super Bowl in history, delivering an average of 7 million streams, up 18% over last year and 103% over Fox’s last Super Bowl stream in 2020, according to Adobe Analytics and traditional counting of streaming (not counting co-viewing from connected devices).
In addition to its Super Bowl numbers, the network’s post-Super Bowl programming, the Season 2 debut of Gordon Ramsay’s Next Level Chef, received 15.5 million viewers, making it the most-watched cooking series telecast in TV history. But those numbers fall short of Fox’s previous post-show programming. In 2020, its Season 3 premiere of The Masked Singer earned 23.7 million total viewers following Super Bowl 54.
Access for all
Helping boost those numbers, Fox made the Super Bowl as accessible as possible.
Though NBC required a cable subscription for the Big Game in 2022, Fox went a different route.
The company offered unauthenticated access across Fox, the Fox Sports app and Foxsports.com, making Super Bowl 57 free for anyone in the U.S. without the need for cable. With the strategy, anyone with a smart or connected TV could watch the game.
In addition to Fox and Fox Sports, viewers could see Sunday’s matchup on live-streaming services such as Fubo, Sling TV, Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV.
Amazon also helped push viewers to the game.
Besides an on-device hub on Fire TV directing fans to apps that had the Super Bowl, Amazon’s Fire TVs integrated Alexa into its plans, guiding users to an app with the game with a simple command of, “Alexa, play the Big Game.”
Super revenue
Fox got a huge headstart on Super Bowl 57 sales, starting to sell ads 18 months before the event.
Though the crypto industry’s collapse and money coming in late gave the company some “nervous” moments, according to executive chair and CEO Lachlan Murdoch, Fox ultimately took in around $600 million for Super Bowl Sunday, with 30-second spots going for north of $7 million.
For comparison, NBCU’s revenue for the 2022 Super Bowl Sunday, which also included coverage of the Olympics in Beijing, was expected to reach $500 million.
And with mere seconds going for millions, the company decided to be “smarter” with its promo strategy, Darren Schillace, president of marketing for Fox Entertainment, told Adweek.
Rather than promote all it has to offer, Fox leaned into a frequency play, highlighting key shows, including Next Level Chef, Joel McHale’s new series Animal Control and upcoming dating show Farmer Wants a Wife.
Fox now passes the Super Bowl baton to CBS, which will air Super Bowl 58 on Sunday, Feb. 11, 2024. The last time the network aired the Super Bowl, it pulled in 96.4 million viewers.
