Young Stars, Offensive Fireworks Could Boost Super Bowl Audience

Fox Sports believes Super Bowl LIV TV numbers "will get a lift from the matchup of the Chiefs and 49ers because the game presents a generational changing of the guard on the field," according to Stephen Battaglio of the L.A. TIMES. Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes is the "ideal representative of the explosive young stars who have emerged in the league over the last two seasons," and he faces a "revitalized 49ers team that established itself as a pass-rushing powerhouse this past season." While overall viewing of the NFL was up last year, the Super Bowl's audience of 98.2 million viewers was the first time since '10 that the event was "less than 100 million viewers." The figure does "not include fans who watched a livestream of the game online," which this year is expected to be 2-3 million viewers. Last year's viewership drop was "attributed to the lack of scoring in the game, a defensive contest" that saw the Patriots beat the Rams 13-3. Battaglio writes even if this Super Bowl's audience "hovers around last year's levels, the game will still tower over the rest of the television landscape at a greater height than ever before as non-sports audiences continue to shrink and viewers spend less time with traditional TV and watch more streaming video" (L.A. TIMES, 1/31).

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COMPLETE COVERAGE: BLOOMBERG NEWS' Palmeri & Novy-Williams write Sunday's game is Rupert Murdoch's "chance to prove his smaller, leaner TV company is still big enough for the NFL." The ultimate audience is NFL team owners and execs, who will be "watching to see what Fox can do with the big game at a time when traditional TV audiences are shrinking." The league also will soon "begin negotiations on new broadcast contracts that start" with the '23 season. Those are "critical talks" for Fox, which spends about $1.7B a year on NFL rights. Fox Sports President Mark Silverman said, "There's nothing more important to our company than the NFL." Meanwhile, at a nine-acre compound Fox created in Miami Beach for the event, team officials, NFL execs and fans can "ride a Ferris wheel based on Fox's hit show 'The Masked Singer,'" or they can "get their pictures taken with Lego versions of Fox Sports personalities." On Wednesday, the net's new competition show "Lego Masters" makes its debut. A floating billboard at the beach "promotes the Fox News Channel, which arranged for Chris Wallace to host 'Fox News Sunday' from Hard Rock Stadium." In many ways, the promotion is "reminiscent of the first Super Bowl that Fox carried" in '97, and that first broadcast "helped legitimize the fledgling Fox net (BLOOMBERG NEWS, 1/31).