Super Bowl 2019 Telecast Continual Video Glitches

Super Bowl LV streaming audience up 48%, TV audience falls 10%

Those watching Super Bowl LV via traditional broadcast TV methods declined 10% from last year's game to reach 88 million. However, the Super Bowl LV streaming audience grew 47%, to reach 9 million.

The TV audience drops to 91.63 million

Whether it was the pandemic or disinterest, Super Bowl LV attracted the smallest TV audience since 2006's match-up between Pittsburgh and Seattle. 91.63 million watched via cable, satellite, telcoTV, vMVPD, or antenna on Sunday. Last year's game attracted 10% more TV viewers than this year.

The official average minute streaming audience for the game was 5.7 million viewers, an increase of 67% over last year's game carried by Fox. The streaming audience reported by CBS is an aggregate of all streamers using CBS Sports, NFL digital properties, Buccaneers and Chiefs mobile properties, Verizon Media mobile properties, and ESPN Deportes digital properties.

Overall, the game between Tampa Bay and Kansas City attracted 96.4 million viewers, down 5.5% over last year's 102 million.

The real streaming audience

The streaming audience reported by CBS is not the total streaming audience for the game. vMVPD viewers like Sling TV and YouTube TV are included in the official television audience. Since there are 12 million vMVPD subscribers in the U.S. today, we must account for them to find the true Super Bowl LV streaming audience.

The Super Bowl received a TV rating of 38.2 (38.2% of TV homes tuned in to the game.) So, we will assume the game got roughly the same rating among vMVPD viewers. However, not all vMVPDs carry CBS stations. Sling TV does not provide any local CBS stations to its 2.5 million subscribers. Philo also does not provide local stations to its 800,000 customers. Removing Philo and Sling TV subscribers means that about 8.7 million vMVPD customers could have tuned in the game.

Assuming the Super Bowl achieved the same rating among the 8.7 million homes that could have streamed the game via a vMVPD, there were 3.3 million vMVPD Super Bowl streamers. So, the total number of streamers for Super Bowl LV was 9 million, and the total watching through traditional TV delivery methods was 88.3 million.

The streaming audience grows 47%

Last year, the total number of homes that streamed the Super Bowl on Fox via a vMVPD was 2.8 million. The figure includes 10% of Sling TV subscribers since the service carries Fox affiliates in approximately 10% of the 210 TV DMAs (designated marketing areas.) The total streaming audience for last year's game was 6.2 million, and the total traditional TV audience was 97.7 million.

So, the Super Bowl LV streaming audience grew 47% between 2020 and 2021. The traditional TV audience declined 10%. The streaming audience represents 9.3% of the total audience for the game. In 2017, the streaming audience represented just 1.7% of the total audience.

What was the experience for streamers?

There only seemed to be one major problem with streaming delivery. Some CBS All Access customers experienced problems joining the live feed of their local CBS affiliate at the game's start. The problem did not affect those that started streaming before the kickoff. The problem was also quickly resolved.

I streamed the game through the CBS Sports website and app on a Chromebook and Google Pixel 4 smartphone over a 60 Mbps AT&T U-verse broadband network. I compared these streaming feeds with my local CBS affiliate's broadcast signal. The picture quality was great throughout. I saw no glitches, streaming artifacts, or freezes. The only difference between the streamed and broadcast feed was a delay. The Chromebook was consistently 16-18 seconds behind the broadcast, and the smartphone was 7-9 seconds behind.[i]

At halftime, I took the dog for a walk and switched to T-Mobile's 4G network. The half time show looked great even though network quality varied between 2 to 5 bars, except for one exception. The picture froze for a few seconds once during the 40-minute walk. Ironically, this occurred during a T-Mobile ad for its new 5G network!

Finally, I noted that all the ads shown on streaming were identical to the ads seen on the broadcast. It is good to finally be rid of the blank ad spaces in the streaming feed, though I'm disappointed CBS didn't take the opportunity to personalize some of the ads using targeting.

[i] I restarted the streams on both devices at the start of each quarter to test the delay behind broadcast.

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