By Connie Thiessen
Super Bowl LVII attracted an average audience of 8.6 million viewers across Bell’s CTV, TSN and RDS, up 6% from last year’s game, according to preliminary data from Numeris.
Overall, Bell Media says 17.3 million unique Canadian viewers or 45% of Canada’s population, tuned in to some or all of the the NFL championship game. Audiences peaked at 11.8 million viewers at 8:40 p.m. ET during Rihanna’s halftime performance.
That compares to an average audience of 8.1 million viewers and 16.9 million unique Canadian viewers in 2022. By comparison, 17.6 million unique Canadian viewers watched some or all of Super Bowl LV in 2021 when The Weeknd performed.
Sunday’s Super Bowl is the most-watched of the 2022/23 broadcast season to date, making CTV and TSN the most-watched networks in Canada on the day. Combined live streaming of the game was up 26% compared to last year, with the game attracting record streams for a Super Bowl for TSN and RDS.
TSN social media content garnered more than 3 million engagements and 28 million views on TikTok, in addition to more than 1.6 million impressions on Instagram, and 1.1 million impressions on Twitter.
The American Super Bowl audience reached 113 million (107 million of those tuning in to Fox’s linear television broadcast), surpassing the 112 million Americans who watched the 2022 game, but short of the 2015 audience record of 114.4 million. Rihanna’s halftime show averaged 118.7 million viewers, up 15% from the 103.4 million average audience for the 2022 halftime show which featured Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and 50 Cent.
This story first appeared in Broadcast Dialogue and is reprinted with permission. Image via Bell Media
