NBC Sports set several audience and consumption records for its live stream Sunday of Super Bowl XLIX. The network late yesterday said it generated an average minute audience of 800,000 for the game, up 52% from the 528,000 average minute audience figure for Fox’ stream last year of Super Bowl XLVIII. NBC also recorded a total consumption figure of 213 million minutes, and a per minute average of 84.2 million minutes user, 76% higher than a year ago. This latest Super Bowl stream attracted 2.5 million total unique users, a figure below the event record of 3 million recorded two years ago by CBS for Super Bowl XLVII, though higher than last year’s 2.3 million uniques. But NBC Sports execs said they were particularly satisfied at the high quality of Sunday’s digital stream, as well as the per user consumption numbers that were well in excess of the three prior Super Bowls that have been streamed. “Eighty-four minutes a user is just a huge number,” said NBC Sports Group Senior VP & GM/Digital Media Rick Cordella. “That figure really speaks to the quality of the stream and that people were sitting on it for really long periods of time.” While the Super Bowl stream was without additional enhancements such as alternate camera angles due to league contractual constrictions, Cordella added he was “happy with the streaming experience that we delivered for this as anything we’ve ever done.” NBC’s figures for the Super Bowl were among the highest digital audience figures for any American sports content ever. But ESPN has bettered most of the numbers on various occasions. That net in particular recorded in excess of 3.2 million uniques for two separate World Cup matches last summer involving the U.S. team. However, NBC was relatively constricted as its Super Bowl streaming rights applied only to personal computers and tablets, and not smartphones. See today's Daily for a review of NBC's Super Bowl stream.
