As late as it went and as rowdy as it got, the City of Brotherly Love made pretty swift progress this morning picking up the debris of last night’s victory celebrations for the Philadelphia Eagles’ first Super Bowl win ever.
The official parade in Philly for the 41-33 triumph over the New England Patriots isn’t until February 8 but there is certainly one element of Super Bowl LII that wasn’t champion – the ratings
With 103.4 million watching, last night’s game on NBC from Minneapolis is down 7% from the total set of network eyeballs from the 2017 Super Bowl. A steeper fall than even the declining the stock market today, that’s the worst the Super Bowl has done since 2009 when the Pittsburgh Steelers 27-23 defeat of the Arizona Cardinals scored 98.7 million viewers.
Last night’s Super Bowl is now pegged as the 10th most watch program in American TV history just after the M.A.S.H. finale of February 1983. Staying Top 10 must feel good and sting at the same time for NBC as the most watched program in U.S. television history is the 114.4 million who watched the 2015 Super Bowl – which was the last time the net had the big game.
Adding another 2.6 million viewers via NBCSports.com, the NBC Sports app, NBC.com TV Everywhere, Universo, En Vivo app, NFL.com, NFL Mobile from Verizon, the Yahoo Sports app, and go90, the Comcast-owned network says its absolute total viewership of 106 million.
In an age of increasing streaming options and coming off a NFL season that was dogged by controversy and double digit ratings drops, the broadcast viewership decline from the Patriots’ win last year in Houston on Fox is really no surprise. Earlier today, metered market results for the 6:31 – 10:25 PM ET game were down 3% from the 2017 big game to an eight-year low for the Super Bowl.
Stumble was also the takeaway from Justin Timberlake’s halftime show of Super Bowl LII. The return of the Grammy winning singer to the big game stage for the first time in 14-years was a series of misfires and banalities almost from start to finish with a misjudged Prince tribute of sorts in the middle. Lacking a showstopper moment anything like what the Purple One did for his entire 2007 Super Bowl halftime show or the Nipplegate wardrobe malfunction that plagued Janet Jackson onstage with Timberlake back in 2004, the Trolls star snared 106.6 million viewers in his 14-minute performance that started at 8:19 PM ET last night.
