Super Bowl LX Draws 124.9 Million Viewers, Ranks as Second Most-Watched in History

NBC's multi-platform broadcast proves premium live sports can thrive behind a paywall — even without free streaming

NBC's presentation of Super Bowl LX on Sunday, February 8, attracted an estimated 124.9 million viewers, making it the second most-watched Super Bowl in history, according to Nielsen. The game, which saw the Seattle Seahawks dominate the New England Patriots 29-13, was simulcast across five platforms: NBC broadcast, Telemundo, NBC Sports Digital, NFL+, and NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock.

The multi-platform distribution strategy — spanning traditional broadcast, Spanish-language television, digital platforms, and paid streaming — proved instrumental in assembling a massive audience that fell just short of last year's record.

A New Era of Measurement

What makes this year's viewership figures particularly noteworthy is the methodology behind them. The audience estimates represent the first Super Bowl reported using Nielsen's recently adopted Big Data + Panel measurement approach. Unlike the legacy system, which relied primarily on sample household TV viewing data, the new methodology combines large-scale data collected from set-top boxes and smart TVs with traditional panel data, enabling more precise audience estimation.

The figures are inclusive of out-of-home (OOH) viewing as well as digital viewing across mobile devices, PCs, MVPD (multichannel video programming distributor) apps, and virtual MVPDs. For an event like the Super Bowl, where a significant share of viewing takes place in bars, restaurants, sports pubs, offices, and hotels, incorporating OOH data provides a more accurate reflection of the event's true reach. The industry has widely regarded this methodological shift as a meaningful step toward capturing the full picture of modern viewership behavior.

The Free vs. Paid Streaming Gap

This year's Super Bowl was outpaced in viewership only by Fox's 2025 broadcast, which drew 127.7 million viewers — approximately 2.8 million more than NBC's tally. However, a direct comparison requires important context.

Last year's Super Bowl was available to stream for free on Tubi, Fox's ad-supported streaming service (AVOD). Anyone with an internet connection could watch the game at no additional cost. This year, streaming access required a paid Peacock subscription. The removal of a free streaming option represented a meaningful barrier to entry, making the fact that NBC still came within striking distance of the all-time record all the more impressive.

Industry analysts have pointed to this as a significant proof point for the viability of premium live sports behind a paywall. Achieving near-record viewership without a free streaming funnel demonstrates the sheer gravitational pull of the Super Bowl as a content property — and simultaneously sends an encouraging signal for Peacock's paid subscriber acquisition strategy. In the streaming era, where platforms are increasingly pivoting from growth-at-all-costs to sustainable monetization, Super Bowl LX may represent a watershed moment in proving that consumers are willing to pay for must-see live events.

Peak Viewership Hits 137.8 Million in Second Quarter

Per Nielsen, viewership peaked at 137.8 million during the second quarter, as the Seahawks held a 6-0 lead over the Patriots. The competitive early-game dynamics appear to have discouraged channel-switching and actively drawn additional viewers in, as audiences tuned in to follow what looked like a closely contested matchup in its opening stages.

Telemundo's Spanish-language broadcast averaged 3.3 million viewers, establishing a new record as the most-watched Super Bowl in U.S. Spanish-language television history. The milestone reflects the continued growth of the Hispanic population in the United States and the NFL's deliberate strategy to expand its Latin fan base. In recent years, the league has invested heavily in Hispanic market outreach through regular-season games in Mexico City, expanded Latin American marketing campaigns, and culturally targeted content initiatives.

Bad Bunny Halftime Show Averages 128.2 Million

The halftime show headlined by Puerto Rican global superstar Bad Bunny averaged 128.2 million viewers between 8:15 and 8:30 p.m., surpassing the game's overall average viewership. The phenomenon of the halftime show out-drawing the game itself is a uniquely Super Bowl dynamic — millions of viewers who may have little interest in football tune in specifically for the musical performance.

Bad Bunny's casting proved to be a strategic masterstroke, drawing in Latin music fans and Hispanic viewers en masse. The effect was synergistic with Telemundo's record-setting performance, as both data points suggest that this year's Super Bowl successfully broadened its cultural reach beyond the traditional American football audience.

NBC's Centennial Milestone: Most-Watched Program in Company History

According to NBCU, Super Bowl LX is now the most-watched program in the company's entire history — a distinction that carries special resonance as NBC celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2026. Founded as a radio network in 1926, NBC has been a defining force in American broadcasting for a century. Setting an all-time viewership record in its centennial year has been internally regarded as a landmark moment for the organization.

The synergy with the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics, which NBC is also broadcasting, further amplified the weekend's impact. Sunday's Primetime in Milan and Milan Prime presentation averaged 42 million viewers. The Super Bowl served as a powerful lead-in for Olympic coverage, giving NBC an unprecedented dual mega-event advantage during the month of February. For NBC, the confluence of the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics has created a period of unrivaled dominance in American television viewership.

Peacock's "Best Day Ever" — A Vindication of Streaming Strategy

NBCU officially declared Sunday, February 8 as "Peacock's best day ever," both in terms of reach and total hours streamed. The announcement strongly suggests that the Super Bowl live stream served as a powerful catalyst for subscriber acquisition — a critical metric for a platform that has been working to establish itself in a fiercely competitive streaming landscape alongside Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and others.

The gains extended beyond sports. The post-Super Bowl debut of The Burbs, a Peacock original series, recorded the highest Day 1 viewership for any Peacock original to date. The strategy of placing a high-profile original series premiere immediately following the Super Bowl is a streaming adaptation of the traditional broadcast "Super Bowl lead-out" tactic, in which networks have historically leveraged the game's massive audience to launch new shows. NBC appears to have successfully translated this playbook to its streaming platform.

The results are expected to provide strong momentum for NBCU's broader strategy of building Peacock into a major streaming contender. The data effectively validates a virtuous cycle model: acquire subscribers at scale through marquee live events, then retain them with compelling original content. This approach, if replicable across future tentpole events, could give Peacock a structural advantage in the ongoing streaming wars.

NBC Sports President Rick Cordella's Statement

In an official statement, Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports, said:

"The Super Bowl and the NFL once again delivered a blockbuster audience across the NBC broadcast network, Peacock, and Telemundo, and provided an unprecedented lead-in to our Primetime in Milan coverage. The Super Bowl and the Olympics are the two most powerful events in the world, and we salute our talented production, tech, and announce teams who delivered best-in-class presentations for our viewers, stations, and partners."

Industry Implications: The Enduring Power of Live Sports

The viewership performance of Super Bowl LX reaffirms that live sports remain the most potent content category in the media industry, even as the landscape undergoes a fundamental transformation. In an era of accelerating cord-cutting and intensifying competition among OTT platforms, the Super Bowl stands as virtually the only content property capable of assembling a simultaneous audience exceeding 100 million.

This year's results are particularly instructive because they demonstrate that near-record viewership can be achieved without a free streaming option. The implication is clear: consumer willingness to pay for premium live sports content is robust and real. This provides further justification for the aggressive sports rights investments being made across the streaming ecosystem — from Amazon Prime Video's Thursday Night Football to Netflix's Christmas Day NFL broadcasts to Apple TV+'s Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball packages.

On the advertising front, the Super Bowl's stature remains undiminished. This year's 30-second ad spots reportedly commanded record pricing, and in a media environment where the number of platforms capable of delivering simultaneous reach to over 100 million viewers continues to shrink, the Super Bowl's advertising premium shows no signs of eroding.

For NBC, Super Bowl LX delivered an ideal scenario: broadcast television's unmatched reach, Peacock's streaming growth, Telemundo's Hispanic market penetration, and Winter Olympics synergy — a quadruple effect that no other media company could replicate. On NBC's 100th birthday, it was, by every measure, a historic night of broadcasting.