Super Bowl ratings 2021: Numbers for Buccaneers-Chiefs plummet from last year
The Super Bowl 2021 ratings are finally out — and they’re not great.
CBS announced on Tuesday morning that 96.4 million viewers watched the game across all their 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.”
Tom Brady and the Buccaneers cruised to a 31-9 victory over the Chiefs on Sunday with the final result not in doubt throughout much of the second half.
CBS did tout the game as the most live streamed ever, with 5.7 million viewers on digital platforms.
While CBS didn’t announce the number off viewers who watched the game on CBS, Sports Business Journal reported the total number was 91.629 million.
Concerns in the sports media industry grew when the ratings for the game were not released on Monday, which is highly unusual.
“Super Bowl numbers are still being processed and verified,” Nielsen said in a statement on Monday night. “We anticipate that final viewing figures, which will include Out Of Home (OOH) viewing, will be available to the media (Tuesday).”
Last season’s Super Bowl, a Chiefs victory over the 49ers on Fox, averaged 102.1 million viewers across all platforms.
Fans in the Boston market were as interested in watching Brady in the Super Bowl as ever. The rating in Boston was 57.6, according to Sports Business Journal, which is the second best Super Bowl rating that market has produced. The only Super Bowl Tom Brady appeared in that bested that mark was Super Bowl XLIX in 2015, when the Patriots beat the Seahawks for Brady’s fifth ring. The Boston rating for that game was 61.
Boston’s Super Bowl 2021 rating was higher than the Tampa market (52.3).
In Kansas City, where Chiefs fans were hoping for a second straight championship, the rating was 59.9 with a peak of 63.1, per Sports Business Journal. Kansas City, Boston and Tampa were the top three markets.
Amid very different circumstances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the New York rating saw a small increase to 45.7, up from 45.2 last year.
