No matter which data you look at, Super Bowl LVIII was the most-watched Big Game in history. 

Nielsen, long considered the predominant measure of live TV viewing, reported Super Bowl 2024 reached an audience of 123.4 million across the broadcasts on CBS, Nickelodeon, Paramount+ and Univision. CBS alone amassed an audience of 120 million, according to Nielsen.

As new measurement players have gained traction over the past several years, analyzing numerous datasets has become more complex. Nevertheless, that complexity can potentially paint a fuller picture of the way viewers watched this year’s Super Bowl, featuring the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers (and Taylor Swift).

According to data from iSpot.TV, 126.6 million viewers watched the game across CBS, Univision, Nickelodeon and Paramount+. That was the average second-by-second audience, a 10.9% increase over last year.

ISpot won the race to report among the major currency measurement providers, releasing its numbers seven hours before CBS reported data based on interim Nielsen data, supplemented by Adobe Analytics for streaming. ISpot pegged the out-of-home average audience—people watching in bars and restaurants at 25.9 million. 

Also read: Top 10 most-liked Super Bowl ads

While Fox and Nielsen reported Super Bowl numbers fairly close together last year, CBS reported a day ahead of Nielsen, and used a mix of Nielsen Fast National and Adobe Analytics analytics of streaming data from its own servers. That followed similar moves in recent years by NBCUniveral’s Peacock, which streamed the Kansas City-Miami playoff game last month, and Amazon Prime, which has streamed “Thursday Night Football” telecasts over the last two years—each company put out releases citing Nielsen numbers alongside numbers incorporating their own first-party data sets.

The widely reported CBS release, however, did not break out Nielsen-only from the data combining CBS and Adobe Analytics. Nielsen’s final stand-alone data came Tuesday, a day later, and showed a minor boost in the numbers originally reported by CBS. Total viewership across all broadcasts grew to 123.7 million, and viewership on CBS alone rose to 120.3 million.

While the 120 million average minute viewers reported by CBS, inclusive of streaming, was a record for any broadcast in Nielsen coverage, iSpot showed CBS’s average second audience a bit higher still at 121.9 million, including out-of-home viewing and streaming, inclusive of Paramount+, as well as other digital providers such as YouTube TV. Nielsen and iSpot topped last year’s record reported by Nielsen for Fox, which at the time reported the most-watched game in history at 115.1 million viewers across Fox, Fox Deportes and streaming. 

ISpot generally has reported audiences bigger than Nielsen, sometimes substantially, when the two report side by side. While Nielsen has declined to break out out-of-home numbers publicly, part of the reason likely resides in how the two measure out of home audiences. (Nielsen recently announced plans to expand its out-of-home measurement to 100% of the U.S. in time for next year's Super Bowl.)  ISpot’s numbers are based on a national panel of people who use its Tunity app to capture audio from broadcasts in bars and restaurants. Nielsen’s OOH data comes from panelists equipped with Portable People Meters, which operate in about 65% of the U.S.

Viewership peaked at 8:22 p.m. ET, just before Usher took the stage for Apple Music’s Halftime Show, according to measurement company AdImpact.

Super Bowl LVIII’s simulcasts 

Nickelodeon’s broadcast, which featured SpongeBob Squarepants and Patrick Star in the announcer booth and under-the-sea animations throughout, averaged 1.75 million viewers, according to iSpot, while Univision’s Spanish-language simulcast averaged an audience of 2.9 million. Nielsen put Nick’s audience at 1.2 million and Univision’s at 2.3 million.

Households streaming made up 34% of the audience, inclusive of Paramount+ as well as other digital providers such as YouTube TV, according to TVision. The number is up from 28% last year. Although neither Nielsen nor Paramount didn’t disclose exact viewership in streaming, the media company is touting it as a “record-setting” audience on Paramount+.

The ads

By audience sentiment, State Farm won the annual ad throwdown, topping USA Today’s annual Super Bowl ad meter, which ranks ads by average viewer rating. But ranking the ads by how well they performed for brands tells a different story.

Also read: Top 5 Super Bowl ads

According to outcomes measurement company EDO, the top-performing ads of the night were Disney’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” trailer and Universal’s “Wicked” trailer. These movie ads generated 2,243% and 2,008% higher engagement than the average Super Bowl LVIII ad, according to EDO. The result makes sense as both highly anticipated titles generated a lot of social media buzz afterward, and the “Deadpool & Wolverine” spot prompted viewers to find the full trailer online.

Outside of hyped studio blockbusters, Volkswagen, Poppi and Temu round out EDO’s top five ads of this year’s Super Bowl. Volkswagen’s spot, which paid tribute to the automaker’s cars throughout history while teasing new models, performed 1,594% higher than the average Big Game ad by engagement. 

Temu, coming in at number 5, scored 1,342% higher in attention than the average Super Bowl spot. The difference, said Kevin Krim, president and CEO of EDO, is that one balanced both high-quality creative and business outcomes, while the other focused solely on the latter.

“Temu was probably one where yeah, it’s not going to win any creative awards, but it’s ultra effective for the business,” said Krim. “You can do both, but just because you’re choosing business outcomes over creative awards—most CEOs and CFOs would definitely take that choice.”

The Taylor Swift effect

And while each Super Bowl always racks up year-high viewership, many anticipated a particular boost because of Taylor Swift’s attendance to support boyfriend and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. According to measurement company TVision’s Attention Index, attention was higher when Swift was featured on screen. Among both men and women, attention was nearly 8% higher when Swift was pictured versus when she wasn’t.