Super Bowl LVIII Ratings Are In and They're Enormous

When a ratings email hits the inbox at 9:32 p.m. ET you best believe it's going to be a nice, juicy number with a puffed-chest subject line and CBS SPORTS’ PRESENTATION OF SUPER BOWL LVIII IS MOST-WATCHED TELECAST IN HISTORY WITH 123.4 MILLION VIEWERS ACROSS PLATFORMS certainly qualifies. This number includes the CBS Television Network, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, and CBS Sports, Univision and NFL digital properties, including NFL+ and there's a chance it goes even higher when the final Nielsen figure comes out today.

They were forecasting an unprecedented flurry of eyeballs once the Super Bowl matchup was decided and the NFL's unmatched monopoly on enormous television viewership has been one of the sports media stories of the year so it's no surprise that the league and CBS are basking in a historic throwback to the monoculture. It turns out that mixing sports and pop culture can be amazing for business.

It's a 7 percent increase over last year's record-setting FOX presentation and an ambitious number to chance next year. We're already excited about predicting something stupid for next year's bonanza in New Orleans. Something to the tune of 128 million? Is that crazy? It doesn't seem that crazy.

You know, a lot of times we're the annoying people who say annoying things (like no one should care about ratings unless they are financially incentivized to do so) but sitting back and reflecting on Sunday night, it is pretty cool that we were all able to band together and prove, once and for all, that this country loves football more than anything else.

Congratulations to us all.