These are the most-watched Super Bowls in NFL history: Can Super Bowl LIX be the most-watched yet?

Super Bowl LIX is coming up as the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles on February 9th and the game will have a ton of attention. With mega stars like Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Saquon Barkley on the field while global pop superstar Taylor Swift is in the stands, the potential exists for this game to be one of the most-watched Super Bowls of all time.

The NFL's quest for viewers has led the league to push its product to the limit in terms of exposure, with increasing primetime windows to satisfy the demand from a litany of broadcast partners to have access to the one ratings-proof commodity in today's world: live sporting events. With football being king, more and more people have watched the Super Bowl in recent memory, leading to new viewership totals that would have seemed unfathomable back when the big game was first conceived in the 1960s.

Understanding the Super Bowl's mass appeal

The Super Bowl wasn't always the most-watched program in America, but the event itself has proven to be the perfect intersection of both sports and pop culture. Unlike the other major professional sports leagues in the country, who decide their championships in a best-of-seven series, the NFL's one-night finale with the Super Bowl makes it destination television for football fans or casual observers who are along for the ride at a big game party.

The casual watchers are often interested in the halftime show (headlined this year by Kendrick Lamar in New Orleans), which provides a free 15-minute concert for one of the world's biggest musical acts, or commercials, which can cost millions of dollars for a company to gain access to a 30-second spot in front of over 100 million viewers. Given the amount of eyeballs that are on the Super Bowl, companies like to pull out all the stops for these ads, bringing in big stars or doing outrageous things to capture the imagination of the audience.

The fact that the Super Bowl has become the most communal viewing experience has allowed moments from the big game to break out into the cultural zeitgeist, creating shared touchstones for everyone who watches to remember. Those moments can come on the field (think where you were when the Patriots pulled off a 28-3 comeback over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI) or off of it (Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" in Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004), so there is certainly some FOMO involved with choosing to skip the big game.

How the Super Bowl became America's game

Believe it or not, the Super Bowl wasn't always the big deal that it is today. The first Super Bowl wasn't even called Super Bowl I when it was played, with the wordier "AFL-NFL World Championship Game" being used to market the first meeting between the champions of the National Football League (the Green Bay Packers) and rival American Football League (Kansas City Chiefs) back in 1967. The actual term of Super Bowl was coined prior to Super Bowl III, when Joe Namath's New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts to prove that the upcoming AFL-NFL merger was a legitimate proposition, and was retroactively applied to the first two games.

One of the unique aspects of the Super Bowl's branding is the NFL's insistence on using Roman numerals in the title of each game, adding a more epic and gladiatorial feel to the proceedings. The one exception to this came when the NFL used the traditional 50 for the Super Bowl following the 2015 season, but the system reverted back to Roman numerals following that campaign.

The earliest Super Bowls were often played during the day, with the first night-time Super Bowl coming in 1978 as the Dallas Cowboys beat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XII. Nearly 79 million people watched that game in the United States, a big jump from the 62 million Americans who checked out a Raiders-Vikings matchup in Super Bowl XI, firmly cementing the game's status as a primetime fixture going forward.

The factors behind a highly-rated Super Bowl

If the NFL could draw up the perfect Super Bowl, they'd want a close game involving star players who capture the imagination of audiences both in the United States and around the world. Last year's Super Bowl was the perfect example of this as the Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers brought a litany of stars to the matchup, which went to overtime for just the second time in the history of the big game, increasing the drama as the night progressed.

Another important factor that influences ratings for the big game is pop cultural relevance that pulls in non-football fans to check out the big game. The halftime show is a big part of this component, an element the NFL downplayed for a long time before seeing a live episode of FOX's "In Living Color" scheduled directly against halftime of Super Bowl XXVI, which managed to draw viewers away from the telecast and keep them there.

That decision by FOX spurred the NFL to go big the following year as they booked Michael Jackson for the halftime show of Super Bowl XXVII in Pasadena. Jackson's iconic performance set the stage for the biggest names in music to pursue a performance on the Super Bowl halftime stage, which doesn't come with a paycheck from the league but does offer tremendous exposure for the artist who headlines the show.

Super Bowl LVIII also had a potential viewership bump from pop superstar Taylor Swift's fan base, who tuned into the game to support Swift's boyfriend Kelce and the Chiefs while also hoping to get glimpses of her in the stands on the CBS broadcast. With the Chiefs back in the Super Bowl this year, FOX is surely hoping to get a nice viewership bump from the Swifties as well.

Unforgettable Super Bowls that were show-stoppers

The game that started it all

It's hard to describe a football game that routinely exceeds 50 million viewers in the United States as coming from humble beginnings, but no one really knew what to expect with Super Bowl I. Fans who entered Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on January 15th, 1967 weren't buzzing with anticipation about the contest, which didn't even sell out the building (an unfathomable thought when tickets for the big game today are among the hardest to secure in the country).

The game itself was not a competitive one as Green Bay blew out Kansas City 35-10 in a game that was aired on both NBC (which had the rights to the AFL) and CBS (which held NFL rights). Just over 51 million combined viewers tuned into Super Bowl I, which was still significantly higher than the average primetime program of the time (CBS' Andy Griffith Show averaged 15.6 million viewers an episode).

An interesting bit of trivia about Super Bowl I is that no complete copy of the original broadcast from either CBS or NBC still exists since both networks wiped their tapes of the game as part of cost-reduction measures, showing how unlikely they thought it was for the Super Bowl to become a signature part of American culture. It took 49 years before the game aired in its entirety as NFL Network was able to stitch together every play from the game using NFL Films footage, re-releasing it on the network on the game's 49th anniversary in 2016.

Super Bowls with record-breaking viewership

The average viewership of the Super Bowl has steadily increased over time, but there were a few significant milestones along the way. The first game to crack the 80 million viewer plateau came with Super Bowl XVI, which was the game where Joe Montana and the 49ers earned their first Super Bowl title with a 26-21 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.

Super Bowl XX set a new threshold for success when the Bears-Patriots matchup became the first broadcast to crack 90 million viewers with over 92 million people tuning in to see the 1985 Bears secure their first Lombardi Trophy. The 100 million barrier was passed in Super Bowl XLIV in 2010 when the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts to win their first Super Bowl.

After a bit of decline during the pandemic years, viewership has come roaring back in the past two seasons. The first Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl in 2023 set an all-time record with 115.1 million viewers only to have it broken again last year, when the Chiefs-49ers overtime thriller became the first Super Bowl ever to crack 120 million viewers with a total audience of 123.7 million across CBS and Nickelodeon's telecasts.

Unforgettable underdog stories

Perhaps one of the most iconic Super Bowls to audiences was Super Bowl XLII, when the New York Giants denied the New England Patriots a chance to become the first team to ever complete a season at 19-0 by pulling a massive upset. The "One Giant Loss" that New England suffered was seen by 97.5 million people.

The Patriots were underdogs themselves back in Super Bowl XXXVI, when they took down the Greatest Show On Turf with a last-second field goal from Adam Vinatieri back in 2002. That contest drew 98.2 million viewers, which was a record at the time.

How we measure Super Bowl audiences is changing

The most traditional metric for measuring viewership is Nielsen ratings, which uses boxes given to an assortment of families across varying age and gender dynamics to chart which television programs are the most watched across the country. The cord-cutting era has made it a bit harder to rely on Nielsen ratings, which is interesting since the audience for the big game has steadily increased over the past 30 years.

The availability of the Super Bowl on over-the-air channels, which do not require a cable subscription to access, has certainly helped in that regard. The networks have also begun to offer games like the Super Bowl on their corresponding streaming services, which includes recent CBS Super Bowls being available on Paramount+ while NBC's simulcast on Peacock.

The NFL has also been hard at work to grow the game internationally, staging regular season contests around the globe to expose other audiences to the NFL. The payoff to this work is still being evaluated but commissioner Roger Goodell recently indicated he wants to do a full 16-game slate of international games in the future, which shows the growing presence of the league on a global basis.

The most highly-regarded Super Bowls

The NFL has seen a positive trend as most Super Bowls since the year 2000 have seen close games, a welcome change after a string of blowouts in the 1980s and 1990s. Aside from the aforementioned Super Bowls earlier, other games that drew rave reviews from fans included Super Bowl XLIII's fantastic finish between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals, Mahomes' first fourth-quarter comeback for the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV, and Super Bowl XLIX's dramatic ending that saw Russell Wilson throw a goal-line interception to New England's Malcolm Butler when a simple run play would have helped Seattle repeat as champs.

Critics are also drawn to close games as instant classics, such as the Wide Right finish between the Giants and Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XX or John Elway's first Super Bowl win for the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXXII. Some of these classic moments have helped define the NFL for years and are looked back on fondly by both fans and critics alike.

When football becomes culture

As a key touchstone on the calendar every year, there are plenty of times that the Super Bowl transcends sports and reflects the realities of the world around it. Super Bowl XXXVI is a good example of this as U2's halftime show paid tribute to the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks that occurred months earlier while Super Bowl LV in 2021 was played during the height of the pandemic, which saw reduced capacity crowds at Raymond James Stadium and a very unique halftime performance from The Weeknd that involved a house of mirrors in an effort to limit the number of extras.

Super Bowls can also impact popular culture through commercials that become instant classics, like Joe Greene's Coca-Cola commercial in Super Bowl XIV, or launching shows that air after the big game to the stratosphere. Networks that air the Super Bowl often air a new episode of an existing program to showcase it to massive audiences (such as NBC's Friends, which aired after Super Bowl XXX and drew a record 52.9 million viewers for a post-Super Bowl program) or a new show (Family Guy's pilot aired on FOX after Super Bowl XXXIII alongside a new episode of The Simpsons).

The big game is also a popular landing spot to hype the year's biggest movies as teaser trailers often air either in the pre-game content or during the contest itself. Some movies have even been announced during the Super Bowl, such as Netflix's surprise drop of a third Cloverfield film teaser during Super Bowl LII that premiered right after the conclusion of the game.

What makes Super Bowl ratings so important

The NFL's quest for viewership is an important one for the league as they look to generate more revenue in the future. Having high viewership in Super Bowls can translate to more viewers for the following season, which leads to the league being able to charge its advertisers higher rates to air commercials during games.

The ratings chase is also important for the league's broadcast agreements with its partners, allowing them to charge exorbitant sums for the rights to air NFL games. A good recent example involves the NFL collecting a cool $150 million check from Netflix for a Christmas Day doubleheader in 2024 and the right to air a Christmas game in each of the next two seasons, figures that wouldn't be possible without significant NFL viewership.

There is no question that the league will look to continue leveraging its relationships with sponsors and new technologies to push ratings as high as possible in Super Bowl LIX and beyond. In an era where linear television is suffering viewership declines across the board, the NFL remains king and its dominance in the Super Bowl (which has routinely become the most-watched program in the United States each year) is a big part of its long-term growth strategy.