Super Bowl gets 111.9 million viewers, down from last year

CBS set a new Super Bowl streaming record with an average of 1.4 million viewers per minute, a notable but unsurprising accomplishment, given that streaming is becoming more popular each year. Last night’s game was the second-highest rated Super Bowl ever, falling just short of last year’s game. It might have been expected for many considered a sluggish game, in which the Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers by 24-10.

The game, telecast on CBS, averaged 111.9 million viewers, down about 2% from the record 114.4 million haul a year ago.

Actual viewership totals will be released later in the day on Monday.

Variety reports that, according to Nielsen, Super Bowl 50 averaged a 49 rating/73 share. While there were some sporadic glitches, most people were able to stream the game without any problems. The wrinkle is that this year’s numbers include both the audience that CBS reached, via its CBS Sports site, and CBS Sports apps on platforms like Apple TV and Roku, as well as the two apps the National Football League operates on its own – an National Football League app for Verizon mobile customers and Xbox.

The Super Bowl had seemed to know no ceiling in popularity, setting viewership records in six of seven years until this one.

That makes Sunday’s game the third most-watched event in USA television history, the Nielsen company said Monday.

Sunday’s Super Bowl also drew big numbers on social media, with some 200 million posts, comments or likes on Facebook during the game, and 3.9 million Tweets during the halftime show that starred Coldplay, Beyonce and Bruno Mars, Facebook and Twitter said.

However, according to the overnight Nielsen data, the ratings held steady in the 9 p.m. ET hour, and peaked at the end of the game, 10 p.m.to 10:15 p.m., with a 51 rating.