The 60th Super Bowl, despite being a rather uneven contest, managed to garner substantial viewership, almost reaching the peak set by the previous year's event. The collective broadcast efforts by NBC and Peacock saw an impressive average audience of nearly 125 million, underscoring the enduring popularity of this annual sports spectacle. The halftime performance, headlined by Bad Bunny, also captured a vast audience and sparked considerable activity across social media platforms.
Super Bowl LX Dominates Viewership Charts
The 60th iteration of the Super Bowl, broadcast across NBC and its streaming service Peacock, drew a significant audience, with an average of 124.93 million viewers. This figure, while slightly below the previous year's record-setting 127.71 million, still positions Super Bowl LX as one of the most-watched events in American television history. The numbers encompass not only the main NBC broadcast but also Telemundo's Spanish-language coverage and various NBCUniversal and NFL digital platforms. Despite a game that saw a decisive 29-13 victory for the Seattle Seahawks over the New England Patriots, the event demonstrated its consistent ability to attract a massive viewership, solidifying its status as a cultural phenomenon.
The peak viewership for Super Bowl LX reached an impressive 137.8 million viewers during the second quarter of the game (7:45-8 p.m. ET), marking an all-time high for a single moment during a Super Bowl telecast. This indicates that while the overall average was slightly lower, the moments of intense engagement were still incredibly strong. The game's one-sided nature post-halftime may have contributed to a slight drop-off in viewership during the later stages, preventing it from surpassing the all-time record. However, its performance under Nielsen's new "big data plus panel" measurement system, which generally favors live events, still highlights the immense draw of the Super Bowl, even when the on-field competition isn't as close as anticipated.
Halftime Show and Streaming Success
The Super Bowl LX halftime show, headlined by global music sensation Bad Bunny, proved to be a major draw, attracting an audience of 128.2 million viewers. Although this was a modest 4 percent decrease from Kendrick Lamar's performance the prior year, it still outpaced the overall game viewership, emphasizing the significant cultural impact and standalone appeal of the halftime spectacle. This performance also made history as the first halftime show delivered in Spanish, contributing to a record-breaking 4.8 million viewers for Telemundo's Spanish-language broadcast, which saw its highest Super Bowl viewership ever at 3.3 million.
Beyond traditional television, Bad Bunny's halftime performance generated an astounding 4 billion views across social media platforms within 24 hours, based on data from Ripple Analytics. This figure more than doubled the social media engagement of the previous year's show, showcasing the increasing importance of digital platforms in amplifying live events. Furthermore, NBCUniversal reported that Peacock experienced its most successful day ever in terms of reach and hours viewed, driven by the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, and the premiere of its series "The Burbs." This comprehensive success across multiple platforms underscores the evolving landscape of media consumption and the Super Bowl's ability to leverage both traditional and digital avenues to engage a vast, diverse audience.