When Kendrick Lamar wrapped his Super Bowl LIX halftime set with “TV Off,” advertisers who’d bought time in the second half of the Fox broadcast must’ve felt as if they were trapped inside a plummeting elevator. Bad enough the three-peat chasing Chiefs were on the wrong end of a 24-0 deficit, but now the artist who’d just rained hot death all over the sports world’s most annoying superfan was spitting the two words that no marketer ever wants to hear.
And yet very few viewers seemed to heed Lamar’s advice. According to Nielsen preliminary data, the Eagles’ 40-22 undoing of Patrick Mahomes and Co. averaged 126.0 million viewers, making it the most-watched Super Bowl on record. (The official tally, including out-of-home deliveries, is expected to be issued on Tuesday afternoon.)
Fox’s deliveries were up 2% versus last year’s 49ers-Chiefs game, which averaged 123.7 million viewers. That final tally includes the 3.46 million viewers who watched one of the simulcasts on the CBS cable sibling Nickelodeon and the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision.
The record turnout comes as a bit of a surprise, given the one-sided nature of the game, although Fox may have gotten a bit of a lift from Nielsen’s recent OOH upgrade and the new Big Data + Panel ratings methodology. The broadcast was also streamed for free via Tubi, a service which boasts some 97 million active users.
While there’s an obvious correlation between closely fought games and strong ratings—from 2022-24, when the average margin of victory was 3 points per game, the networks averaged 117 million viewers—blowouts are sometimes a bit more hit or miss. For example, although the Bears’ 36-point margin of victory over the Patriots in 1986 is still the second-biggest spread in the game’s 59-year history, the first-time inclusion of these two major-market franchises helped keep the numbers nice and sturdy. Per Nielsen, Super Bowl XX averaged 92.6 million viewers, a record that would hold up until the third Cowboys-Steelers duel in 1996.
But make no mistake: Sunday’s game was over well before K-Dot started rapping about silencing the idiot box. While the final score included a pair of garbage-time KC touchdowns that made the contest seem deceptively close, the Eagles served up the sort of curbstomping that hasn’t been seen since the likes of Seattle’s disassembly of Denver in 2014. The Seahawks’ 43-8 win over the Broncos remains tied as the third-biggest margin of victory in Super Bowl history, although Fox still managed to serve up 113.3 million viewers. (Including the bonus 1.09 million people who took in Super Bowl XLVIII via the Fox Sports stream or the Spanish-language simulcast, the beatdown at MetLife still stands as the ninth most-watched NFL game on the books.)
Kansas City wouldn’t make its first trip into Philly’s end zone until the waning seconds of the third quarter, whereupon a failed 2-point conversion attempt put the score at 34-6. Two additional Jake Elliott field goals gave the Eagles a 40-6 edge with about eight minutes left on the game clock. If Cooper DeJean’s pick-6 in the middle of the second quarter felt like the dagger, Nick Sirianni’s Gatorade shower with 2:52 left to burn off made things official: Any Mahomes GOAT talk or rumblings of a Chiefs dynasty had been paused by Philadelphia’s relentless defense.
This was Mahomes’ worst game as a pro, and at no point did the three-time Super Bowl MVP have an answer for what the Birds were throwing at him. The Eagles were all over him like Crisco on a Broad Street lamppost, sacking him six times and picking him off twice. At no point did Mahomes seem comfortable in the pocket; he worked through his reads like a man running for a bus, only to be smothered just seconds after the snap. And even the Chiefs’ patented dink-and-dunk tactics—nothing spells “D-Y-N-A-S-T-Y” like slipping yet another 6-yard slant through the coverage—weren’t much help either, as Philly made the best player in the sport look totally adrift out there. Bundlerooski!
Speaking of which, while Jake from State Farm stayed clear of New Orleans, the ad dollars kept pouring into Fox’s coffers after the insurance company and a handful of other brands backed out of the Big Game. Per EDO Ad EnGage estimates, Fox generated some $597.2 million in Super Bowl LIX ad sales revenue, a figure that includes approximately $470.2 million in national in-game spend. (Fox gets to keep all that cash, thanks to TV’s longstanding policy of not furnishing ratings guarantees to Super Bowl advertisers.)
If the Eagles effectively used the same playbook that earned the Bucs a win over KC four years ago—the same smash-the-QB scheme gave the Giants bragging rights over the Pats in 2008 and 2012—Jalen Hurts performed well enough to earn his MVP hardware. Hurts closed out the game with some real throwback numbers, connecting on 17 of 22 passes for 221 aerial yards and two scores while adding another 72 yards and a touchdown on the ground. Meanwhile, Mahomes entered the fourth quarter with a miserable 18.1 rating, a mark that would have put him squarely in Kerry Collins territory if not for the subsequent pair of stats-padding TD tosses.
All of which probably made Tom Brady really happy, although Fox’s seven-ring man didn’t crow over Mahomes’ big loss. Brady called his first Super Bowl alongside Kevin Burkhardt, and while his performance wasn’t particularly memorable, he’ll have plenty of time to work on his craft. With ABC now in the rotation, Fox won’t air another Super Bowl until 2029.
Outside of the Chiefs organization and whatever’s left of Drake, the night’s biggest loser may have been Pat Riley, who missed out on a chance at making a few extra bucks by licensing his trademarked “threepeat” to KC. Presumably, a whole bunch of kids in East Timor and Kiribati will be sporting Chiefs championship merch as soon as the USCENTCOM drop arrives.
NBC will have next ups in Santa Clara on Feb. 8, 2026. Super Bowl LX will mark the network’s 21st broadcast of the NFL’s title game. CBS leads all comers with 22 thus far. The two networks shared TV duties for the very first Super Bowl, with the establishment partner (CBS owned the NFL rights for the 1966 season, while NBC covered the upstart AFC) averaging 26.8 million viewers to NBC’s 24.4 million.
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