NBC's Super Bowl ratings just miss record — but Bad Bunny was the top draw
Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
- Sunday's Super Bowl was the second-most-watched after the 2025 game.
- NBC's broadcast, featuring a lopsided game and a Bad Bunny performance, was viewed by 124.9 million.
- A new ratings calculation method introduced last year has helped boost ratings.
The Seattle Seahawks won Super Bowl 60 and so did NBC — but not by as much as they would have liked.
An average of 124.9 million people tuned in, per NBC Sports. NBC generated the second-most-watched Super Bowl — behind 2025's game on FOX Sports — in its broadcast of the Big Game. It ended a two-year streak of record-breaking Super Bowl viewership.
Telemundo, however, delivered a record with the most-watched Super Bowl in US Spanish-language history with an average of 3.3 million viewers. That viewership peaked during Bad Bunny's halftime show performance, with 4.9 million viewers.
Overall, viewership was an average of 128.2 million from 8:15 to 8:30 p.m. ET during Bad Bunny's performance.
An all-time record 137.8 million viewers watched across NBC, Peacock, and Telemundo during the second quarter, according to NBC Sports.
A more detailed breakdown will be available from Nielsen later this week, NBC Sports said in its press release.
Many major sporting events — including last year's Super Bowl — have seen their ratings increase since Nielsen changed its ratings calculation in late January 2025 to better account for out-of-home viewing, such as people watching at restaurants and bars.
The college football National Championship Game drew in just over 30 million people, up about 36% from last year's mark of 22.1 million and close to the all-time record of 33.9 million in 2015.
Under Nielsen's prior ratings methodology, this year's college football championship would have generated just over 28 million viewers. That's based on an ESPN spokesperson telling The Athletic that the game's ratings would have risen 27% year over year under the old format. In other words, out-of-home viewing appeared to add 2 million viewers to the game's total.
So while Nielsen's revamped viewership calculations may have affected Sunday's ratings, it might not have made a massive difference.