Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – The Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots — and Bad Bunny’s hyped halftime show — fell short of broadcast ratings records, according to figures released on Tuesday.
The Seahawks’ 29-13 victory over the Pats averaged 124.9 million viewers on NBC, streaming platform Peacock, Spanish language Telemundo, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL+, according to same-day ratings from the Nielsen media research company’s Nielsen Big Data + Panel ratings system. That makes it the second-most watched show in US history behind the 127.7 million US viewers that watched the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 on Fox last year. In the second quarter, the game reached 137.8 million viewers, the highest peak viewership in US television history.
Telemundo averaged 3.3 million viewers, marking the most-watched Super Bowl in US Spanish-language history. Telemundo’s audience peaked during the halftime show, with an average of 4.8 million viewers – the most-watched Super Bowl halftime in Spanish-language history. Overall, the halftime show by Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who became the first-ever halftime show headliner to sing only in Spanish, averaged 128.2 million viewers. Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show in 2025 was the most-watched ever with 133.5 million viewers. That surpassed the record of 133.4 million viewers set by Michael Jackson in 1993.
A lackluster game first half may have contributed to lower audience figures. This was also the first Super Bowl to be reported using Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel method, a hybrid system that combines data from panel households with that from smart devices such as smart TVs. Prior reporting used Nielsen’s Panel-only measurement.
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