Super Bowl 55 Had Lowest Viewership Since 2007, But Streaming Jumped 69%

This year's Super Bowl 55 was not a very exciting game--the Tampa Bay Buccaneers routed the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 in a game that saw KC score zero touchdowns--and the viewership was the lowest on network TV and across the board in many years.

CBS Sports announced on Tuesday that the big game reached 96.4 million viewers, according to Deadline. This includes people who watched on CBS along with other sources. The total number of people who watched the game was surely much higher, though. Even without as many Super Bowl parties this year due to COVID, multiple people in the same home were likely watching the game at the same time.

About 91.6 million people watched the game on CBS by itself, which is down about 8% from the numbers on Fox for Super Bowl 54, and it's the lowest reach for a Super Bowl network TV audience since 2006 (which was a completely different time in the world as it relates to TV programming and audience reach on network TV).

When looking at the total number of viewers across all platforms, Super Bowl 55 had the lowest ratings since 2007.

In better news for the game, Super Bowl 55 was the most live-streamed Super Bowl to date, reaching 5.7 million viewers per minute (up 69% from 2020, which was a record).

The lack of exciting action on the field no doubt attributed to the lower viewing results for Super Bowl 55. The game had the makings of an intriguing matchup, with KC and Patrick Mahomes trying to defend their Super Bowl title against the legendary quarterback Tom Brady with his new team. But none of the promised action came to fruition, and the Bucs steamrolled the Chiefs to win their first title since 2002.

The EA Sports Madden Super Bowl prediction was also very, very wrong this year.