Halftime Show Viewership Down Slightly Year-Over Year; The Farmer’s Dog Wins Hearts, Becoming Super Bowl’s Biggest-Reaching Brand Advertisement

Samba TV, the global leader in television technology powering real-time measurement and omniscreen audience insights, released U.S. linear television and streaming viewership data from Sunday night’s Philadelphia Eagles vs. Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl match-up.

Samba TV reported that this year’s championship game scored viewership on par with last year’s game, notching a slight increase of approximately half a percentage point compared to 2022’s Super Bowl LVI. Overall, based on Samba TV’s analysis derived from its nationally weighted household panel which pulls from over 25 million connected TVs in the U.S. measuring both linear and streaming TV consumption, 36.7 million households in the U.S. watched the Super Bowl this year compared to 36.5 million who tuned in last year. This number does not include any mobile consumption or out of home viewership.

“Super Bowl LVII had a number of historic firsts that combined to make this year’s big game the most watched since 2020 with over one in four American households tuning in. More than 36.5 million homes watched the Chief’s come-from-behind victory over the Eagles, surpassing last year’s viewership by nearly half a percent,” said Samba TV Founder and CEO Ashwin Navin.

Passionate Chiefs fans pushed Kansas City to become the highest over-indexing market in the U.S. in terms of viewership, surpassing the national average by 20%. Eagles’ hometown fans followed closely behind with Philadelphia over-indexing the national average by 15%.

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The halftime show, featuring a solo performance by pop and R&B sensation Rihanna, drew a sizeable audience this year, although down slightly from last year’s performance. Approximately 28.5 million households in the U.S. tuned in for the Super Bowl Halftime Show sponsored by Apple Music, compared to the 28.7 million that tuned in for last year’s show backed by Pepsi.

Rihanna’s ability to draw in audiences reached well beyond football diehards as more than one million households waited to tune in until the nine-time Grammy winner’s halftime show began.

“Rihanna’s star power has only continued to grow since her last tour and album release more than half a decade ago. Apple Music’s visually stunning halftime show drew in an impressive twenty-eight and a half million viewers, falling just short of last year’s star-studded show featuring some of the biggest names in rap music including Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige. Overall, the halftime show drew in about a quarter of a percent fewer viewers than last year,” added Samba TV’s Navin

Samba TV also provided an advance look at its upcoming Super Bowl ad rankings that will be released later this week which analyze the top scoring ads from Sunday’s game in terms of overall household viewership. The heartwarming ad from The Farmer’s Dog scored the #1 spot amongst all brand advertising commercials.

“The Farmer’s Dog broke the internet and our hearts with 60 seconds of pure joy taking millions of football fans along for a tear-filled journey to one of the sweetest and emotionally packed endings of any Super Bowl commercial we have seen in years. The ad not only captured massive social buzz, it won the Super Bowl ads race reaching more than 28 million homes,” said Navin.

“As we are seeing with almost all of linear television today, while the price of advertising continues to increase — in the case of the Super Bowl by nearly ten percent per ad since last year alone — audience reach is not keeping up as this year’s slight year-over-year viewership increase demonstrates.”

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