Super Bowl LIII: Who watched the game?

It seems like the National Football League just cannot catch a break right now. Following a season of higher TV ratings than 2017 and after riding out a new series of on and off-field controversies, this year’s Super Bowl audience turned out to be a major disappointment. Despite two of the most exciting, high scoring teams taking part in the 53^rd edition of the NFL’s showcase event and with many marvellous back stories for media headlines, the post-game chatter centred on the worst TV viewing figures across America for a decade.

Initial numbers showed a 44.9 overnight Nielsen audience rating for the New England Patriots’ 13-3 win over the Los Angeles Rams well down on last year’s 47.7 and nowhere near the record set in 2015 of 49.7. Those figures convert to about 98 million viewers for Sunday’s game compared to 103 million last year, about a 5% audience drop from NBC’s broadcast 12 months ago.

Although full, consolidated figures will only be available next week, pundits are already asking what happened and whether previous recent predictions about a long-term decline in live pro football viewing on TV are still true. In 2017, the NFL has lost audiences due to major PR nightmares such as players kneeling during the national anthem (a protest that prompted President Donald Trump to call the players “sons of bitches”) and horrific details about large numbers of untreated concussions leading to player brain injuries. The 2017 NFL season witnessed unprecedented falls in audience numbers on the back of those storylines - as high as 20% for some key shows.

There is an argument that Sunday’s poor Super Bowl audience does not define the NFL’s overall television viewing strength. After all, NFL games racked up 46 of the top 50 audience numbers in the whole of last year. Nevertheless, there has to be an inquest into the league’s most important game of every season. This week-long build-up always