Sure, there’s a game going on, but does anyone outside of Cincinnati actually care? Most of us, will be watching the real stars, lots of high-priced ads.
The Super Bowl stands as the most-watched television event of the year. In most years, the game only provides part of the attraction. The commercials — which cost $6.5 million per 30 seconds — often provide more highlights than the actual game itself.
This year, the NFL has a competitive match-up, but the Cincinnati Bengals come from a small market and the Los Angeles Rams have a limited fan base which has made some of its home games de facto road games. That makes the casual viewing audience that tunes in for the commercials even more important to Comcast’s (CMCSA) – Get Comcast Corporation Class A Report NBC, which will broadcast the game beginning at 6 p.m. Eastern.
In addition to airing on broadcast NBC, the game will also stream on the premium tier of the company’s Peacock streaming service and on NBCSports.com.
The 2021 version of the NFL title game saw its audience drop to 91.6 million viewers while another four million or so watched the game online or on other feed options including Disney’s (DIS) – Get Walt Disney Company Report ESPN Deportes cable channel, which offered a Spanish language feed.
“With around 91.6 million viewers on CBS alone, the 2021 Super Bowl is still the most-watched show of the past year. However, taking an 8% stumble from what Fox had on its broadcast network last year, the 55th Super Bowl distinctly had the smallest network audience since the very different TV era of 2006,” Deadline reported.
This year’s game may fall even further, but that’s still a lot of people — almost certainly the largest TV audience of the year — who will be tuning in for the commercials.
Update 5:47 EST
We’ll get started with the first ad after kick-off. That should be around 6:30 p.m. EST.
