Sunday’s Super Bowl LIV broke the all-time Canadian audience record, drawing an average of 9.5 million viewers across CTV, TSN, and RDS, according to preliminary Numeris data supplied by Bell Media.
Bell says nearly 18.7 million unique viewers – 51% of the Canadian population – tuned in to watch some part of the NFL championship game, with Calgary and Vancouver earning 80.3% and 79.5% audience share respectively.
Audiences peaked at 12.1 million viewers at 8:22 p.m. ET during Jennifer Lopez and Shakira’s high-energy halftime performance.
Those ratings push the broadcast to the most-watched of the 2019/20 season and most-watched Super Bowl broadcast ever, beating the 2016 record of 7.32 million viewers, the last Super Bowl broadcast prior to the CRTC simultaneous substitution ban. Over the last few years, viewership had waned in both Canada and the U.S., however American audiences also saw a year-over-year increase for the first time since 2015, with the Kansas City Chiefs’ come-from-behind victory over the San Francisco 49ers drawing 99.9 million TV viewers to Fox – up almost 1.5% over last year’s New England Patriots-Los Angeles Rams matchup.
Sunday’s game also attracted a significant Canadian digital audience, with livestream viewers on the CTV, TSN, and RDS platforms up 42% and Super Bowl page views on TSN and RDS growing 21%. On social media, CTV and TSN earned nearly 4.5 million impressions on Instagram and almost 2.2 million on Twitter.
Post-game, the Season 3 premiere of The Masked Singer on CTV attracted 1.6 million viewers, the biggest post-Super Bowl audience since 2012. Overall, Bell Media says the NFL playoff audience grew 31%, reaching 22 million Canadian viewers.
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