Super Bowl LIX: Eagles’ Domination Over Chiefs Ekes Past Last Year’s Nail-Biter To Set Viewership Record

The Philadelphia Eagles left Caesars Superdome victorious on Sunday night, and while the Kansas City Chiefs’ hopes of winning a third consecutive Super Bowl were foiled, Fox did manage another sought after three-peat.

Super Bowl LIX attracted 126M viewers across Fox, Fox Deportes, Tubi, Telemundo and NFL digital properties, according to projections from the Fox Corporation that combine Nielsen and first-party data. Final data will be available tomorrow, and this post will be updated when it is.

That makes it the third consecutive Super Bowl to hit a record high audience. Not only is it the most-watched Super Bowl of all time, it now takes the crown from last year’s big game as the second most-watched TV program after the Apollo moon landing.

Super Bowl LIX was up 2.1% from last year’s previous record of 123.4M viewers and 9.4% from 2023’s audience of 115.1M, which is the last time that Fox hosted the game.

Fox says that the game peaked with 135.7M viewers between 8 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. ET, which was during the second quarter, minutes before Kendrick Lamar took the stage for the halftime performance.

Streaming generated 14.5M average viewers throughout the night, and Tubi alone was responsible for 13.6M.

That’s huge for the free ad-supported streaming service, which Fox acquired in 2020, considering many streaming vets wondered about its technical capacity for handling a live event of this magnitude. So far, there haven’t been any reports of major technical failings on Tubi’s end, indicating the event went on largely without a hitch.

Considering the game was a near blowout, with the Eagles dominating the Chiefs from the first snap of the ball, this is a pretty big win for Fox. Last year’s Chiefs-49ers matchup was quite a nail-biter that went into overtime, and the last time the Chiefs faced the Eagles in the Super Bowl in 2023 (which hit a record audience at the time) was also a close game, decided in the final minutes by a field goal.

The last time the Super Bowl didn’t come down to the wire was in 2021, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Chiefs 31-9 on CBS, and that game drew the lowest ratings since 2006 with only 91.63M tuning in.