The most-watched Super Bowl isn’t always the most recent one. The record was set eight years ago, the last time the game was played in Arizona.
This year, Fox has plausible hope that the high-water mark of 114.5 million viewers from Super Bowl XLIX (televised by NBC) can be surpassed.
“We have a lot of reasons to be optimistic,” Fox executive Mike Mulvihill recently told Stephen Battaglio of the Los Angeles Times. “If we have an increase over last year, we have a great shot at setting the record.”
Super Bowl LVI between the Bengals and Rams (also televised by NBC) generated viewership of 112.3 million.
Appearing on the Marchand & Ourand Podcast, Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks expressed similar sentiments, but he added that luck is also a factor. The game needs to be a close one, all the way to the end.
Otherwise, the audience tails off and the average number for the full experience falls.
Whether the number is 100 million or 120 million or somewhere in between, here’s the question I’ll be asking when the final figure emerges. It’s the same question I ask every year.
In a country populated by more than 330 million people, what the hell else was everyone else doing?