The Super Bowl LVIII was a grand affair, with the who's who of the American cultural lexicon in attendance at the Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada, as the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 25:22. This was the team's second straight title in their fourth appearance in this format, earned thrillingly as Patrick Mahomes & Co needed overtime, the first such instance since 2016 and only the second time in history.
With so much happening in one of the most famous and followed sporting events in history, there was much to discuss among netizens catching the action online every other second. Whether it is Twitch chatter activity or discussion on players, sponsors, the halftime show, and teams, here's an analysis of how things went down among viewers.
Super Bowl LVIII in numbers
The game to determine the champion of the National Football League for 2023 saw the fewest fans turn up in the stadium to catch the action. The attendance figure of 61,629 was the lowest in Super Bowl history outside of the COVID-19 pandemic despite being the first to be held in Nevada state.
It was televised nationally by CBS and streamed on Paramount+, with alternative broadcasts available on Nickelodeon — the youth-oriented network — and the Spanish-language TV network Univision. It was also live-streamed on TelevisaUnivision's Vix in Spanish and the paid NFL+ app.
Most importantly, it had a certain Taylor Swift in attendance to watch her boyfriend — Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — in action. Also present was Olivia Culpo, the fiancee of 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey, and all this star power helped this American football spectacle attract 123.4M viewers across all of CBS's platforms, making it the most-watched telecast in history.
It was also the largest audience in American history for a single network. The Super Bowl LVIII also finished as the most streamed game in the game's history on Paramount+, with more than 200M viewers watching at least part of it on either CBS, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, or Univision.
Incredibly, one record CBS will no doubt love to boast about is the fact that even though it fell short of the 150M-plus viewers mark required to reach number one, it was the second most-watched broadcast program in history. In the top spot is the Apollo 11 moon landing from 1969, a record the event has now held for almost six decades.
Other records to be broken included the mark for the longest field goal in Super Bowl history getting broken twice in this game. Lastly, it became the seventh-longest game in NFL postseason history thanks to going overtime, with the Chiefs also recording a legacy-defining third victory in the last five years.
Chat activity during Super Bowl LVIII
Over the 30 days leading up to the bit event, there was a clear winner when it came to the count of usage on Twitch chat. The Kansas City Chiefs accrued 121.5K chatters from 288.9K total mentions between January 13 and February 11, which was more than the event itself.
Again, it has to be noted that the Taylor Swift connection is strong here. As one of the biggest pop culture names globally today, her relationship with Travis Kelce has been making headlines every other day, and her presence in this game was a big reason for many viewers tuning in to see the action, at least at some point.
In fact, the multiple-time Grammy Award winner flew across the world to see her boyfriend in action after performing at the Eras Tour in Japan. Speaking of this music awards show, its 66th edition took place in Los Angeles on February 4-5, and here's our recap of the Twitch chat dynamics from this ceremony.
There were also rumors that another megastar of the worldwide music industry, Justin Bieber, would be performing at halftime. However, that did not happen, but the intrigue was enough to attract millions of his fans to the broadcast in the hope that he would surprise them with an appearance.
But the NFL does owe much of its record-breaking season to Taylor Swift, who also attended 13 other Chiefs games throughout the year to support her partner. This helped drive up the league's viewership numbers and popularity as a whole, as reported earlier this month by Nielsen, who said that during the 2023 regular season, NFL games on TV and live streaming averaged 17.9M viewers, a year-over-year rise of 7% and the most viewers since 2015.
In comparison, the San Francisco 49ers were only mentioned 77.4K times, with the active chatter count from this number being 39.7K. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl itself received 106.7 active chattes from a total usage count of 179.4K. The spikes in and around January 21 and 28 came about because both the participants in this event were in action as part of their Divisional playoffs commitments.
When looking at the daily mentions during this same time frame, the Chiefs were again the most mentioned in Twitch chat on average. The 49ers did see a couple of spikes, but this was the trend over the three weeks leading up to the event. However, over the few days leading up to the game, it became apparent that Super Bowl fever had gripped the nation and world, as its mentions shot through the roof thanks to fans eagerly anticipating the game day.
Moving to the sponsors and brands who used this sporting extravaganza to their advantage, a lot of prominent names popped up. It has to be remembered that this year’s Super Bowl ads saw companies pay a reported $7M per 30-second spot, with US brands estimated to have spent around $650M to secure these TV slots.
Google emerged as the most mentioned brand, getting 274.8K active chatters across 668.4K mentions on the purple platform. In all fairness, the tech giant's ad was the talk of the town and received positive reviews from most quarters. It told the story of a man with low vision recording his life in sharp photographs using Guided Frame with Google AI, a new feature of the company's successful Pixel smartphone.
Taco Bell and Microsoft were the other two companies to stay around the 50K active chatters mark, with the former just about managing it. They were also the only two names apart from Google to cross 70K mentions on Twitch chat between January 13 and February 11. The latter's ad also turned heads as it introduced the world to the Copilot A.I. assistant, which the firm says is 'Your everyday AI companion that will make life easier.'
When looking at the various celebrities and players fans saw on screen and at the stadium, Taylor Swift was the undoubted star. The pop star got 108K active chatters from 242.1K counts of usage, with Chiefs hero Patrick Mahomes coming second in the former metric.
The winning side's coach, Andy Reid, received the second-highest mentions at 70K, while halftime show star Usher had 28.5K counts of usage and 19.4K chatters. His performance involved famous tracks like Caught Up, Burn, OMG, and Yeah, and a throwback set with Alicia Keys, Ludacris, will.i.am, and Lil Jon.
It would be remiss of us not to mention Kanye West, who has not been having the best of times lately with sponsorships. Adidas cut ties with him and his shoe brand, Yeezy, a couple of years back, and in a pretty bold move, the musical artist spent around $7M for a Super Bowl commercial but filmed the actual ad on his phone!
He told his fans in a selfie-style video that this was the ad as he had spent all his money on paying for the slot, asking them to go to Yeezy's website and buy products that had costs lowered to as little as $20. The company ended up doing $19.3M in business, while his video (read ad) for the game went viral on social media.
It was a night of all-round entertainment in Las Vegas on February 11, with celebrities and stars gracing the Allegiant Stadium on a night when millions witnessed sporting excellence. With the Super Bowl becoming bigger than ever and adopting a positive attitude to broadcasting, it could continue breaking United States telecast figures, be it on Fox (2025), NBC (2026), ABC/ESPN (2027), or CBS (2028).