NEW YORK (AP) – An estimated 114.4 million people watched New England’s thrilling win over Seattle, making it the fifth time in six years that a Super Bowl game has set a record for the most-watched event in U.S. television history.
The viewership eclipses the 112.2 million who watched Seattle beat Denver in the 2014 game, the Nielsen company said. The game also set standards for social media and online.
“Right now the NFL and the Super Bowl are defying media gravity,” Mark Lazarus, NBC Sports Group chairman, said on Monday. With the buildup involving the league’s two top teams and a controversy over the inflation of footballs in the Patriots’ conference championship, the game may have set another record even without the compelling finish, he said.
But that finish – a circus catch to put the Seahawks on the doorstep of a last-minute win and a game-saving interception by the Patriots’ Malcolm Butler – kept viewers glued to the tube. An estimated 120.3 million people were watching during the last 10 minutes that the game was being shown, Nielsen said. Lazarus said there were likely even more viewers, because Nielsen doesn’t count people watching in sports bars, for example.
The ratings attest to the continued strength of the NFL as a television property despite a year of controversy over the league’s response to domestic violence, and also to the ongoing power of live events to bring viewers together before their televisions.