A combined audience of 112.3 million people watched the Super Bowl on various outlets, a nearly 16% jump from last year’s diminished viewership.

Some 99.2 million people viewed the game on NBC, another 1.9 million on its Spanish-language sibling Telemundo, and 11.2 million on streaming services such as Peacock, the network said in an email.

The strong turnout was another sign that the National Football League is gaining viewers despite a shrinking television landscape. 

Sunday’s game featured the Los Angeles Rams defeating the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 after Matthew Stafford threw a 1-yard touchdown pass to Cooper Kupp with less than 2 minutes remaining. It was one of several close games in recent weeks that kept fans glued to their TV sets.

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Last year the big game drew an audience of 96.4 million TV and digital viewers on CBS, a unit of ViacomCBS Inc. That matchup, featuring the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a lopsided 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, was the smallest audience for the Super Bowl in more than a decade.

NBC, which is owned by Comcast Corp., sold 30-second Super Bowl commercials this year for as much as $7 million, a record. Advertisers for the game included cryptocurrency exchanges, carmakers and streaming services.

NBC used the big Super Bowl audience to boost Winter Olympics coverage, which is seeing a steep decline in TV viewership. NBC aired Olympic events right after the Super Bowl, a departure from the past when broadcasters have typically used that time slot to promote a TV show. 

NBC said its Beijing Olympics broadcast after the Super Bowl drew 24 million viewers, marking its largest Olympics primetime audience since the opening day of the 2018 winter games.

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—Bloomberg News