SI

Why Super Bowl TV Ratings Will Be Down This Year

The Chiefs’ absence, the lack of superstars and access to the game will prohibit Patriots-Seahawks from setting a record.
Jimmy Traina|
The Patriots and Seahawks don’t have the juice that the Chiefs and Eagle had last season.
The Patriots and Seahawks don’t have the juice that the Chiefs and Eagle had last season. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

1. Last year’s Super Bowl between the Eagles and Chiefs drew 127.7 million viewers for Fox. It set a new record for the most watched telecast in television history.

My guess is that NBC won’t come close to topping this on Sunday, despite Nielsen using a new viewership measurement system that has seen big increases across the board for most sporting events in recent months.

For one reason, last year’s Super Bowl aired on Fox’s free streaming service, Tubi. This year’s Super Bowl will air on Peacock, which is a paid service. Tubi has 97 million active users. Peacock has 44 million subscribers.

Another big reason why this Super Bowl won’t be watched by as many people as last year’s is because of who is here and who isn’t here.

Travis Kelce’s fiancée is not part of this Super Bowl. That eliminates a large portion of people who watched last year’s Super Bowl despite not caring even one bit about football. Patrick Mahomes has also reached that level where the non-NFL fan may tune in to see him play. Sam Darnold and Drake Maye will not bring in one of those fans.

Darnold is a great story, Jaxon Smith-Njigba is unbelievably fun to watch and Mike Vrabel has done an amazing job, but this Super Bowl lacks superstars and personalities. There’s just nothing there for the fringe fan.

In addition, ratings for the AFC and NFC championship games were soft compared to last year when you factor in Nielsen’s new measuring system. The Patriots-Broncos game drew 48.6 million viewers, while Rams-Seahawks pulled in 46 million viewers. The year before, Commanders-Eagles drew 44.2 million viewers, while Chiefs-Bills landed a massive 57.4 million viewers.

This isn’t doom and gloom, though. The game will draw more than 100 million viewers and it will be the most watched telecast of 2026. NBC will be more than happy when the ratings come out. But Fox doesn’t have to worry about its record being broken this year.

2. SiriusXM’s Chris “Mad Dog” Russo did an interview with ESPN’s Kevin Clark in which he eviscerated Tony Dungy for refusing to reveal who he put on his ballot for this year’s Pro Football Hall of Fame voting.

3. First Take has done 18 hours of shows since the Seahawks-Patriots Super Bowl was set. Anyone complaining because the show discussed the Cowboys on Thursday is just looking for cheap engagement. Are they supposed to spend every single minute of every two-hour show talking only about the Seahawks and Patriots? Ten minutes of Cowboys talk out of 18 hours isn’t anything to get worked up about—unless you’re looking for those easy “likes.”

4. This made me LOL.

5. Shams Charania reported last week that it was expected Giannis would be traded from the Bucks. The Bucks did not trade Giannis before Thursday’s deadline. So the Bucks decided to tweak Shams.

6. This week’s SI Media With Jimmy Traina features an interview with NBC’s Maria Taylor, who will host NBC’s five-hour Super Bowl pregame show this Sunday.

Taylor talks about her prep for the event, explains why Super Bowl Sunday is in some ways an easier gig than a regular NFL Sunday, reveals whether she has thought about how many people will be watching the pregame show and discusess the physical and mental nature of doing a five-hour show. Taylor also talks about her role as the Lombardi Trophy presenter for the first time in her career.

Other topics discussed with Taylor include what it was like to work with Brent Musburger and Lee Corso, her exit from ESPN, the Sunday Night Football studio hosts drawing attention for TikTok dances and much more.

Following Taylor, SNY's Sal Licata joins me for our weekly "Traina Thoughts" segment. This week, we discuss the Super Bowl, the Grammy Awards, another food incident that I had over the weekend, Will Arnett throwing out one hell of a teaser, the end of the Washington Post sports department and more.

You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast below or on Apple and Spotify.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on YouTube.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Still the best Super Bowl halftime show of all time.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on X and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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