NBCUniversal staked its claim to a new Super Bowl streaming record, announcing Tuesday that the average minute audience (AMA) for the championship matchup between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals reached 6 million.

That AMA figure includes Peacock, which streamed the big game for the first time, NBC Sports Digital platforms, NFL Digital platforms, Rams and Bengals mobile properties, and Yahoo Sports mobile properties.

Figure 2: Peacock streamed the big game for the first time.
(Source: Ascannio/Alamy Stock Photo)

NBCU claims the Super Bowl LVI AMA of 6 million passes the AMA of 5.7 million for Super Bowl LV, the championship between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. By contrast, Super Bowl LIV in 2020 drew an average-minute streaming audience of 3.4 million.

NBCU said streaming delivery of Super Bowl LVI rises to 11.2 million AMA viewers when taking into account co-viewing from connected devices and "across all digital endpoints." The company didn't elaborate on how exactly it measures co-viewing. Notably, the live stream of Super Bowl LVI was reached without "any unauthenticated access on desktop and connected devices, in contrast to previous Super Bowls," the company added.

Though live streaming of the Super Bowl on the aforementioned platforms climbed again in 2022, the overall reach was still a far cry from the overall TV ratings. Super Bowl LVI, a 23-20 victory by the Rams, delivered 101.1 million TV viewers across both NBC and Telemundo.

Comcast-owned NBCU said the game drew a total audience delivery of 112.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched show in five years – since Super Bowl LI between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons in 2017, which attracted 113.7 million total viewers on Fox.

Figure 1: Streaming still a drop in the ocean: Super Bowl LVI delivered 101.1 million TV viewers across both NBC and Telemundo.
(Source: Reuters/Bing Guan/Alamy Stock Photo)

No to low latency

Streaming media analyst Dan Rayburn wrote in a LinkedIn post that NBCU's live stream for Super Bowl LVI did not use ultra-low latency streaming "because there was no business value in offering it." From his observations, the live stream was 10 to 35 seconds behind the traditional TV feed, depending on streaming platform and device.

From a pure ROI standpoint, reducing the latency of the Super Bowl stream would not have enabled NBC to deliver more ads or boost the time that viewers watched, Rayburn explained, noting that, as a consultant on a past Super Bowl, he learned that the additional cost for a low-latency workflow would have eclipsed $1 million for the day. "There is ALWAYS a cost vs. quality tradeoff that takes place with any streaming media service or event," he noted.

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading