Comscore Map Shows Where Super Bowl Viewers Tuned In And When Some Tuned Out

The Super Bowl remains the most-watched event in television and the analysis of it never stops.

Comscore has provided TVREV with a heat map, showing how engaged viewers in all 210 local markets were with the big game. The analysis is made possible because Comscore’s methodology works from bottom-up, which means all markets are measured the same way so that if you add them together, it will equal the national rating.

The heat map enables readers to click on any DMA and get the Super Bowl viewing share on a quarter-hour basis.

Two obvious hot spots were the homes of the victorious Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, who failed at their attempt to achieve an unprecedented Super Bowl three-peat. In Philadelphia, an average of 2.94 million viewers tuned in, with ratings peaking at 48.18. (Comscore’s local numbers do not include viewing on streaming services, including Fox’s Tubi, which is measured by Comscore’s cross-media product.)

In K.C., 978,560 people tuned in, with a peak rating of 50.52. If you recall, the game was a blowout, and you could see viewers in Chiefs kingdom tuning out starting in the third-quarter, when the Eagles put the game out of reach with a long touchdown pass, Brian Pugh, chief product officer at Comscore told TVRev. The rating was down to 47 at the end of the game.

Conversely, in Philly, and in most of the rest of the country where Chiefs fatigue had fans rooting against the omnipresent Pat Mahomes and Travis Kelce, viewership rose from halftime on, Pugh said.

The market with the highest overall rating was Sioux City, Iowa, close enough to Kansas City to smell the barbecue. The ratings there rose from 60.23 at the beginning of the game to 72.28 by the time the final gun went off. Fans also tuned in big time in Buffalo, whose hometown Bills were knocked out of the playoffs by the Chiefs. Ratings there peaked at 61.20

The market least interested in the big game? Monterey-Salinas, California, said Pugh. Ratings there were a paltry 29.15. California and the rest of the west didn’t have much of a rooting interest in the Super Bowl. On the other hand, football is football and folks in SEC country down south tuned in.

On a nationwide basis, Comscore estimates that the Super Bowl drew 99,936,653 in-home viewers on Fox, Fox Deportes and Telemundo, and another 13,843,128 streaming on Tubi for a total of 113,779,781.

A year ago, the super Bowl drew 108,553,470 viewers on cable and broadcast (CBS, Nickelodeon, Univision), not including Paramount+ and other digital video. (Comscore does not measure out-of-home viewing.)

Comscore TV estimates include vMVPDs but exclude out-of-home and mobile viewing, ensuring a clear picture of in-home linear TV consumption.

What does this all mean? “It matters who’s playing in the Super Bowl. It also matters to some degree who’s winning,” Pugh said. He added that if you’re a local station and your rival is showing the Super Bowl, there are still many viewers you can capture who are not watching the big game. “I would not recommend putting up a test signal and going home early that day.”