Super Bowl TV ratings in the U.S. 1990-2021

TV ratings of the Super Bowl reached a 50 year low in 2021. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ victory over the Kansas City Chiefs received a household TV rating of 38.2 in the United States. A total of just under 92 million viewers tuned into the event in 2021, down from a record high of over 114 million Super Bowl viewers in 2015.

Super Bowl ratings the lowest in years

The ratings are compiled by media industry analysts Nielsen, a company that has been measuring television audience patterns in the United States since 1950. The highest Super Bowl rating of all time is 49.1 for the San Francisco 49ers’ triumph over the Cincinnati Bengals in 1982. New England’s sixth Super Bowl win in 2019 was watched by an average television audience of 98.2 million viewers – the lowest TV viewership of the NFL’s showpiece event since 2008, before dropping even lower for the 2021 Super Bowl.

The hottest ticket in town

TV viewing figures for the Super Bowl may be falling, but fans continue to attend the event in droves. More than 62,000 spectators watched Kansas City’s triumph in Miami in 2020, but that is some way short of the record attendance for the Super Bowl: close to 104,000 fans attended the game in Los Angeles in 1980. After hosting the 2020 event, Miami became the city to have hosted the most Super Bowls, with a record 11 games taking place in the city.