Ratings score
The year 2024 had the Summer Olympics and a huge election, but football dominated the ratings once again. Here’s a look at TV trends.
MOST-WATCHED PRIME TIME TELECASTS OF 2024 (total U.S. viewers)
The year’s most-watched telecasts (in Live+7 ratings), according to broadcast and cable measurements, in both total viewers and adults 18-49
| Rank | Program (Network) | Viewers | Date aired |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Super Bowl LVIII: Kansas City vs. San Francisco (CBS) | 121,009,000 | Feb. 11 |
| 2. | NFC Championship: San Francisco vs. Detroit (Fox) | 56,632,000 | Jan. 28 |
| 3. | AFC Divisional Playoff: Kansas City vs. Buffalo (CBS) | 50,715,000 | Jan. 21 |
| 4. | NFC Playoff: San Francisco vs. Green Bay (Fox) | 37,895,000 | Jan. 20 |
| 5. | NFL Playoff: Detroit vs. L.A. Rams (NBC) | 32,371,000 | Jan. 14 |
| 6. | NFL “Thursday Night Special”: Kansas City vs. Baltimore (NBC) | 24,888,000 | Sept. 5 |
| 7. | NFL “Thursday Night Special”: Green Bay vs. Miami (NBC) | 24,315,000 | Nov. 28 |
| 8. | NFL “Sunday Night Football”: Kansas City vs. Atlanta (NBC) | 22,710,000 | Sept. 22 |
| 9. | NFL “Sunday Night Football”: San Francisco vs. Dallas (NBC) | 21,836,000 | Oct. 27 |
| 10. | NFL “Sunday Night Football”: Buffalo vs. Miami (NBC) | 21,367,000 | Jan. 7 |
| 11. | NFL “Sunday Night Football”: Buffalo vs. San Francisco (NBC) | 20,536,000 | Dec. 1 |
| 12. | Presidential Debate (ABC) | 20,257,000 | Sept. 10 |
| 13. | The 96th Academy Awards (ABC) | 20,215,000 | March 3 |
| 14. | NFL “Sunday Night Football”: Detroit vs. L.A. Rams (NBC) | 20,129,000 | Sept. 8 |
| 15. | NFL “Sunday Night Football”: Baltimore vs. Buffalo (NBC) | 20,101,000 | Sept. 29 |
| 16. | Summer Olympics “Sunday Prime Week 1” (NBC) | 18,978,000 | July 28 |
| 17. | NFL Wild Card Game: Philadelphia vs. Tampa Bay (ABC) | 18,922,000 | Jan. 15 |
| 18. | World Series Game 5: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. NY Yankees (Fox) | 18,276,000 | Oct. 30 |
| 19. | 66th Grammy Awards (CBS) | 18,118,000 | Feb. 4 |
| 20. | NFL “Sunday Night Football”: Houston vs. Chicago (NBC) | 18,110,000 | Sept. 15 |
Even bigger
Including the international market the 2024 game reached approximately 210 million viewers.
Why watch?
A 2024 survey by Seton Hall University said that when it comes to watching the Super Bowl people are most interested in:
- The game: 49%
- Halftime show: 25%
- Commercials: 21%
- Don’t know: 5%
The ads
CBS received about $7 million for each 30-second commercial during the 2024 Super Bowl, up about $500,000 from 2023. There are typically 80 to 90 commercials during the game. This year the price for FOX Corp. is reportedly to be $7 million to more than $8 million depending on the brands. In a report by Variety, Mark Evans, executive vice president of sales at Fox Sports said, “The Super Bowl is the only place where you can aggregate legitimate scale with one commercial. It’s not like any other thing.”
Audience universe
Thanks to technology and TV-connected devices, viewers have more ways to watch programming than ever. Television is still the preferred method, but even that has changed as people are watching more and more shows on time-shifted TV (such as digital recordings) and online.The chart to the right shows Nielsen estimates for the monthly U.S. audience across a spectrum of devices.
Household ownership of devices
Nielsen’s National Television Household Universe for 2023-24 estimated there are 125 million TV homes in the U.S., and 58.7% have a device capable of streaming content to the television set.
Here’s the breakdown:
Total viewers: Estimated to be 304.5 million (age 2 and up), an increase of 0.9% from 2016.
Sports and drama: 14% of total TV viewing is of sporting events, and most of them are viewed live, whereas more than half of TV drama is recorded and watched later.
How we’re watching
Given the abundance of streamable content, much of which can be watched on demand, streaming has grown to a sizable portion of total TV usage, hitting 43.3% in December, up from 38.4% the year before.
Sources: Variety, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Nielsen Co., Consumer Electronics Association, Bloomberg Media, Sportico.com