Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: American Football, NFL, Patrick Mahomes
Alex Brotherton
Official figures show that a record-breaking audience tuned in to watch the Kansas City Chiefs win Super Bowl 58 on Sunday.
The Chiefs snatched a dramatic 25-22 win against the San Francisco 49ers Las Vegas, with Mecole Hardman Jr catching the walk-off winner deep into overtime.
Quarterback Patrick Mahomes guided the Chiefs to a third Super Bowl triumph in five years by beating the team they overcame in the Super Bowl four years ago.
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The finale of the NFL season is annually one of the biggest sporting events in the world, but in the United States it is undisputedly the top dog.
Now, official figures have been released that confirm that this year more people watched the Super Bowl than ever before.
According to CBS - the network that broadcast the game along with NFL Network, Univision, Paramount+, NFL+ and ViX - the Super Bowl drew a staggering 123.4 million viewers, making it the most watched television programme of all time.
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The previous record was set last year, when 115.1 million viewers watched the 2023 Super Bowl on Fox television networks and the league's own platforms.
Overall, 202.4 million viewers watched at least part of the broadcast, making it the highest unduplicated total audience in history, marking a 10% increase from last year's Super Bowl (184 million).
CBS Sports said that digital streaming on Paramount+ helped it achieve the historic audience figures.
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The meeting between the Chiefs and the 49ers was one of the most anticipated Super Bowl clashes in recent times, thanks to the quality of both teams but also because of off-field factors.
The Super Bowl half-time show - this year starring Usher and guests including Alicia Keys and Ludacris - was, as always, a major attraction.
The presence of Taylor Swift played a significant role too, as new audiences have been attracted to the NFL since she started dating Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce.
"The Super Bowl is really the last of the truly communal TV experiences, making it not only immune to the audience decline that all other programming types are experiencing, but in fact positioned for growth," Syracuse University television historian Robert Thompson said.
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NFL games made up a staggering 93 of the top 100 broadcast programs last year, according to data from Nielsen.