NBC scores best Super Bowl ratings since 2017, marks ‘most streamed’ big game ever while Olympics ratings also see boost

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NBC’s telecast of Super Bowl LVI Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, delivered 101.3 million broadcast viewers and an estimated total of 112.3 million across all platforms, the network announced Feb. 15, 2022.

According to early unofficial Nielsen data, NBC says that an average of over 101 million viewers watched the broadcast on either the NBC television network or Telemundo’s network.

2022 marked the first year Telemundo carried the Super Bowl as well as the first time the game was carried by a broadcast network in Spanish. It also marked the first time the Super Bowl aired during an Olympics.

Combined with an estimated 11.2 million digital viewers, the total audience delivery is estimated at 112.3 million, which is the highest since 2017.

That broadcast, on Fox, attracted 113.7 total viewers across all platforms.

Telemundo viewers helped make this year’s matchup the most viewed Spanish language NFL game in history, averaging 1.9 million.

Viewership peaked from 7:45 to 8 p.m. eastern with 104.4 million estimated viewers.

The halftime show, which ran from 8:15 to 8:30 p.m., averaged 103.4 million viewers, delivering a 7% increase over 2021’s halftime show.

NBC is also noting that the 2022 Super Bowl has gone down as the “most streamed” Super Bowl ever.

The network streamed the game on Peacock for the first time (it’s also the first year NBC had the Super Bowl and the streamer was up and running) and that, combined with other NBC platforms plus Yahoo, NFL, Rams and Bengals mobile and digital properties and garnered a 6 million average minute audience, comparable to last year’s AMA of 5.7 million.

Unlike 2021, access to the Super Bowl on desktop and connected devices required authentication with either a pay TV provider login or Peacock account.

Meanwhile, the average Super Bowl commercial reached 106 million viewers and all together generated a total of 4.6 billion verified household ad impressions via all platforms during the 216 minutes of the game. The most watched ad was a two minute animated spot for the NFL that aired at 8:08 p.m.

The “Super Gold Sunday” coverage of the 2022 Winter Olympics, as NBC branded it, also registered significant viewership bump.

Sunday night’s live primetime Beijing Olympics coverage after the Super Bowl averaged a total audience delivery of 24.0 million viewers — the largest NBC Olympics primetime audience since the opening Sunday of the 2018 Winter Games.

That also makes it the most watched night of the 2022 Winter Olympics overall to date, which have seen a general decline in viewership.