Can Rams-Bengals Super Bowl Showdown Sack Last Year’s 14-Year Ratings Low?

Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams has a lot to live up to. The last six NFL playoff games have all come down to the final minute, with five of those games being won on the last play.

That’s allowed the NFL’s TV partners to reach viewership numbers they haven’t hit in years, and sometimes even decades (albeit with one very important caveat).

CBS had its best season in six years, capped off by the AFC Championship Game two Sundays ago that drew nearly 48 million viewers. That was also the most-watched NFL championship game in that early afternoon window in six years. Fox’s coverage of the NFC Championship Game later that night would surpass 50 million viewers, the most for a semifinal game in eight years.

The 2022 NFC Championship game was the most-watched TV telecast on any network since last year’s Super Bowl. It was the most-watched telecast on Fox since the broadcaster’s 2020 Super Bowl.

The weekend prior, when all four games were won on the last play, Fox had its most-watched telecast ever for a Saturday with nearly 37 million tuning to the San Francisco 49ers-Green Bay Packers game. The Kansas City Chiefs’ overtime win over the Buffalo Bills drew the most viewers for a Divisional Round game in five years with more than 42 million on CBS.

The NFL is also coming off its strongest regular season since 2015 with more than 17 million tuning in each week — up around 10% from last year.

Now here’s where we get to that caveat: Starting last fall, Nielsen began incorporating out-of-home viewing into its viewership tallies, which means that those watching in offices, bars, gyms or their friend’s house are added. It’s been something networks have wanted for years because it can add around a 10% lift to that all-in number. There’s also been a major increase in including digital viewership among the overall numbers, so comparisons to years ago aren’t exactly apples-to-apples.

But even with that, the NFL TV numbers this season are defying the rest of the broadcast industry. Disney CEO Bob Chapek said Thursday on the company’s earnings call that live sports accounted for 94 of the top 100 TV broadcasts last year and most of those were NFL football.

Now it’s the Super Bowl’s turn for a rebound. Though it was still far and away the most-watched TV show last year, Super Bowl LV between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs fell to a 14-year low on CBS, dipping below 100 million viewers. In fact, the Super Bowl has struggled to keep its head above that 100 million-viewer threshold in recent years, often times getting there with the help from digital platforms.

It didn’t help that last year’s game, despite featuring Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes, was a snoozefest that was dominated by the Bucs defense. This year’s game pits the hometown Rams who get to play in their own stadium in Inglewood, Calif., against the Cincinnati Bengals and rising star quarterback Joe Burrow.

For the Bengals, it’s their first Super Bowl since 1989, while the Rams were in the Big Game just three years ago (they lost to the New England Patriots in the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever).

As we’re seeing with this year’s playoff games, if it comes down to the final minute, the league and broadcaster NBC will get a Hollywood ending.