Wall Street Journal
February 7, 2011
By SAM SCHECHNER
Head coaches Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Mike McCarthy of the Green Bay Packers spoke before Super Bowl XLV on Sunday.
A record number of viewers watched the Green Bay Packers defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Sunday's closely fought Super Bowl, as professional football continues to reel in an otherwise fragmented TV audience.
For the second year in a row, the game set a record as the most-watched telecast in U.S. history. Approximately 111 million people watched the game on Fox Broadcasting, according to Nielsen Co.
That is about 4.2% above last year, when New Orleans's defeat of Indianapolis on CBS Corp.'s namesake network unseated the 1983 series finale of "M*A*S*H" as the most-watched single broadcast in the U.S.
The big audience is a boon for Fox, which has seen its average prime-time audience of 8.1 million viewers decline 18% from this point last season, according to Nielsen, with declines in some of its big series like "House" and weaker post-season baseball ratings.
Both Fox and The Wall Street Journal are owned by News Corp.
A tight matchup, popular teams and cold weather across much of the U.S. helped boost viewing, analysts suggested.
Pro football and with a handful of other popular events like the Academy Awards have seen their audiences spike in recent years even as viewers splinter among a growing number of channels. In each of the last four years, the Super Bowl audience has broken its own audience record, according to Nielsen data.
For the regular National Football League season, an average of 17.9 million people tuned in, up 7.6% from the previous season.
The big Super Bowl numbers look bigger in part because of population growth. When looking at the percentage of the households that tuned in, rather than the absolute number of viewers, none of the recent Super Bowls approaches the peaks of the late 1970s and early 1980s. About 49.1% of TV households watched the 1982 Super Bowl, compared to 46% on Sunday. Still that percentage is bigger than any Super Bowl since the 1996.
In the teams' home media markets—Pittsburgh and Milwaukee—about 59.7% of homes with TVs were tuned to Sunday night's close game, according to preliminary data Fox provided. In the New York City area, about 42.6% of homes with TVs were watching, which Fox said was the most that had tuned in for a Super Bowl not featuring the New York Giants in 28 years.
Fox gave the coveted post-Super Bowl spot to its musical series "Glee." That boosted its audience to 26.8 million people. So far this season, 11.6 million have watched the show, on average.
From a marketing perspective, having a viewership of 111 million people is obviously a very positive thing. With this being the single most watched broadcast in history I think that companies will find that the ridiculous prices that they were paying for thirty second ads was money well spent. After a viewership of 111 million people this year I can’t even imagine what the going rate will be for a standard commercial for the Superbowl next year. It was be interesting to see how much of a raise in sales companies receive after their ad airs.
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