Ratings Roundup: Super Bowl LV Notches 96.4 Million Total Viewers; Becomes Third Most-Watched Super Bowl in Canada With 8.8 Million Viewers By SVG Staff
Friday, February 12, 2021 - 6:45 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Ratings roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press releases and reports around the industry. In this week's edition, Super Bowl LV hits a total audience o f 96.4 million viewers and 8.8 million in Canada, UConn's overtime thriller on Fox Sports 1 does damage, and more.
Numbers From Super Bowl LV CBS Sports' coverage of Super Bowl LV, which featured the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' lopsided victory (31-9) over the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, Feb. 7 (6:38-10:17 PM, ET), posted a Total Audience Delivery of 96.4 million viewers across all platforms, including the CBS Television Network, CBS Sports and NFL digital properties, Buccaneers and Chiefs mobile properties, Verizon Media mobile properties and ESPN Deportes television and digital properties.
Despite a 22-point margin of victory - the second-largest for a Super Bowl in the past 18 years - viewers consumed Super Bowl LV across multiple platforms, including record numbers on digital.
Super Bowl LV was the most live-streamed NFL game ever. The average minute audience of 5.7 million viewers was the highest average minute audience for any NFL game and was up 65% vs. last year's Super Bowl. Super Bowl LV also became the first NFL game in history to deliver more than one billion total streaming minutes.
Super Bowl Sunday delivered a record-breaking day on CBS All Access in terms of new subscriber sign-ups, unique devices, streams and time spent.
Kansas City led all metered markets with a 59.9 HH rating, the highest rating ever for a Super Bowl in that market, up 8% vs. the Chiefs' victory last year. Boston tuned in to watch former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, ranking second with a 57.6 HH rating, the second-best rating ever for a Super Bowl in that market, surpassing all but one of the Patriots' Super Bowls (2015). Tampa was third with a 52.3 HH rating, the second-best rating for a Super Bowl in that market (2003).
CBS Sports social media accounts saw tremendous engagement growth on Super Bowl Sunday, driving an increase of 31% over 2019 when CBS last had the game (Super Bowl LIII).
Super Bowl LV generated more than 127 billion potential impressions on social media on Sunday. (CBS Sports)
On the digital side, CBS Sports HQ set new viewership records for its round-the-clock news, interviews, and picks-focused coverage on Sunday and throughout the week from Tampa. CBS Sports HQ set a single-day record with 3.5 million unique viewers on Sunday, February 7, beating its prior record of 1.2 million viewers on February 3, 2019. CBS Sports HQ also set a new single-day record for time spent with 105 million total streaming minutes on Monday, February 8. (CBS Sports)
In an additional digital note, Super Bowl Sunday was a standout day for Bleacher Report led by a record-breaking performance for its football vertical, B/R Gridiron, which maintained its position as the most engaged football account across digital media on NFL Sundays this season. The Big Game vaulted B/R Gridiron to its most-engaged day of all-time with more than 2.6M engagements (up 72% YoY) leading all competition on Instagram. This single day high comes on the heels of a milestone January for the two-year-old brand marked by 31 Million total engagements, 60K engagements per post, and 2.1 Million cross-platform video views.
Super Bowl LV also fueled the second best single day for the Bleacher Report account across social with more than 11.7 Million engagements the most since the 2020 NBA Finals. The B/R Betting vertical experienced a 3x increase in engagements compared to the 2020 Super Bowl with more than 655K likes, comments or shares of content and more than 1.7 Million cross-platform views the most viewed day ever for video content on B/R Betting channels. Finally, the B/R app a 39% YoY in engagements and an increase in average time spent on Sunday that topped 9 minutes per user a 12% increase from Super Bowl LIV.
North of the border,the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' victory in Super Bowl LV is the third-most-watched Super Bowl ever in Canada, attracting an average audience of 8.8 million viewers on CTV, TSN, and RDS, according to preliminary data from Numeris. The game attracted significant engagement across the networks' digital platforms, with Super Bowl live streaming on CTV, TSN, and RDS growing by 108% compared to last year.
17.6 million unique Canadian viewers, accounting for 47% of Canada's population, tuned in to watch some part of the NFL's iconic championship game. Audiences peaked at 11 million viewers at 8:38 p.m. ET during the Pepsi Super Bowl LV Halftime Show headlined by Canadian superstar The Weeknd.
Super Bowl LV ranks as Canada's most-watched broadcast of the 2020/21 broadcast season. CTV and TSN were the first and second most-watched networks in Canada on Sunday.
In the coveted post-game timeslot, the premiere of CTV's highly-anticipated new series HOLMES FAMILY EFFECT attracted an average audience of 918,000 viewers and was the third-biggest overnight debut of the current broadcast year among A25-54, and the biggest debut for a Canadian series since CTV's TRANSPLANT in 2020.
Always a can't-miss TV event of the year, we're very proud to see Super Bowl LV go into the record books as the third-biggest ever in Canada, said Stewart Johnston, Senior Vice President, Sales & Sports, Bell Media. Bell Media joined a multitude of advertising clients in leveraging the biggest audiences of the year to showcase our original programming, including the debut of Canada's latest hit original series HOLMES FAMILY EFFECT, which debut
More from Sports Video Group
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
28/05/2026
FOX Sports' MLB coverage dominated the night at the 47th Annual Sports Emmy ...
28/05/2026
One of the most memorable postseasons in baseball history would have had no memo...
28/05/2026
NBC's Sunday Night Football is among the most-decorated and most-watched pro...
28/05/2026
The 2026 Sports Emmys marked a watershed moment for Prime Video Sports. After bu...
28/05/2026
Hosted by ESPN Senior Writer Ryan McGee, the ceremony honored winners from athletic departments, conference offices, professional networks, production companies...
28/05/2026
Major rights-holders rolled out their 2026 college football slates today, offering a first look at marquee windows, kickoff partners, and conference distributio...
28/05/2026
The 4 Nations Face-Off, an international competition that launched in February 2...
28/05/2026
Soccer is a truly global sport, and, to match the U.S. viewing audience's in...
28/05/2026
The NFL Today, CBS Sports' top-of-the-line NFL studio show, has a storied hi...
28/05/2026
Prime Video is no stranger to innovation, and, within the realm of live streamin...
28/05/2026
The crack of the bat, the pop of the glove, and the cheer of the crowd: those are three prime examples of the glorious sounds fans hear on televised baseball ga...
28/05/2026
Every year, March Madness captivates the entire sports world. Nonstop action, un...
28/05/2026
NBA on NBC was an integral part to live sports production in the 1990s, and, when the league made these media rights available, NBC Sports saw an opportunity to...
28/05/2026
UmpCam is a technological wrinkle that has given fans unprecedented views of wha...
28/05/2026
T-Mobile and the United States Golf Association (USGA) announced a multi-year partnership, making T-Mobile the Official 5G Network Partner of the U.S. Women'...
27/05/2026
Telestream has announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Benjamin Desbois as Chief Executive Officer, effective July 1, 2026. Desbois, currently Teles...
27/05/2026
ESPN garnered 10 awards; NBC's Sunday Night Football received the Outstandin...
27/05/2026
Matrox Video is celebrating its 50th anniversary, marking five decades of operations from its headquarters in Montreal, Canada. Founded in 1976, the company has...
27/05/2026
Major League Baseball has announced a series of initiatives tied to America's Semiquincentennial, including a national marketing campaign, Fourth of July br...
27/05/2026
Advanced Systems Group (ASG) has announced that Brian Gross has joined the company as an Account Manager on its Audio team, based in the Burbank office. He will...
27/05/2026
Nielsen has released new research on soccer fandom ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2...
27/05/2026
ESL FACEIT Group (EFG) has unveiled a new partnership with TikTok to bring broad...
27/05/2026
FIFA's Oscar Sanchez gives a deeper look to how this tournament will be cove...
27/05/2026
The soon-to-be senior from Charlottesville is building her skills in replay, TD, and even creative content for HokieVision and its ACC Network productions
In t...
27/05/2026
FOX Sports' Mike Davies breaks down the vision for this summer's showcas...
27/05/2026
HBS's Paul King, FIFA's Oscar Sanchez preview how the masses at home wil...
27/05/2026
FOX's MLB coverage dominated the night at the 47th Annual Sports Emmy Awards...
27/05/2026
One of the most memorable Postseasons in baseball history would have had no memo...
27/05/2026
NBC's Sunday Night Football is among the most decorated and most watched programs in the history of television. It added to its jam-packed trophy case on Tu...
27/05/2026
The 2026 Sports Emmys marked a watershed moment for Prime Video Sports. After bu...
27/05/2026
With the Opening Match just over two weeks away, the entire sports-production-te...
Ratings Roundup: Super Bowl LV Notches 96.4 Million Total Viewers; Becomes Third Most-Watched Super Bowl in Canada With 8.8 Million Viewers By SVG Staff 
