On Sunday, 123.4 Million Viewers. On Tuesday, 800 Layoffs

Super Bowl LVIII is in the record books as the most-watched telecast in history. With 123.4 million viewers across all platforms, CBS Sports topped rival Fox Sports’ record audience of 115.1 million for last year’s game. 

This year, the NFL generated banner TV numbers for the regular-season, wild-card, divisional, and conference championship playoff rounds. And CBS posted its most-watched regular-season and postseason numbers since landing the AFC package in 1998. Momentum’s a real thing in television: I was in Las Vegas all Super Bowl week. By the time Sunday rolled around, it was accepted as a given by almost every TV executive I talked to that this year’s game would set a new record. 

It’s easy to attribute the record TV numbers to Taylor Swift, the pop superstar who brought millions of new fans to the NFL due to her romance with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. But Super Bowl Sunday’s monster TV numbers have been years in the making for a day that’s become an unofficial national holiday. Consider:

1. The face of the NFL: Patrick Mahomes is having an effect on a league like no player since peak Tom Brady, LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Michael Jordan. Far from “Chiefs fatigue” they’re becoming like Jordan’s Bulls to TV viewers: must-see TV. It’s no coincidence the Chiefs’ back-to-back Super Bowl wins generated the highest TV audiences in history. Expect another record next year if they get a crack at a three-peat. Meanwhile, Mahomes has shifted the NFL’s “pop culture hub” to Kansas City from major media markets like New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas, writes Deadspin. The Chiefs are going global, too. Internally, the franchise has set its sights on becoming the “world’s team.” They played in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2023 and could return this year. During a press conference in Las Vegas, foreign reporters were begging NFL officials to have the Chiefs play in their respective countries as the new “America’s Team.” Sorry, Cowboys. 

2. Taylor Swift effect: It’s hard to draw a direct line from Swift’s newfound fandom to the league’s record TV audiences. But there’s little doubt inside the NFL that she boosted viewership, especially among younger viewers and women. League spokesperson Andrew Howard tells me the league clocked its highest regular-season female viewership since it began tracking in 2000, and the best regular season among 18- to 34-year-olds since ’19. The NFL’s female viewership rose 9% this season compared to 6% for males. CBS sold expensive, in-game commercial slots to four beauty advertisers compared to zero on Fox last year. As global trendspotter Marian Salzman tells Front Office Sports: “It has become one Swift world. Honestly I think she is the best bridge [advertisers] have to women of all ages—and the men who shop with them.”

3. Last unifying event: Only 20 years ago, the Super Bowl was averaging between 80 million and 90 million viewers. During a seven-year period from 1998 to 2004, not a single game broke the 90 million mark, according to Sports Media Watch. But in a divided nation, the Super Bowl has become “the most important cultural event outside of Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July—and hands down it’s the most important media event,” says Patrick Crakes, the former Fox Sports executive turned media consultant. “It’s the last true unifying national viewing event of the media engagement diffusion era. It’s the only media program on any platform that can say something like that.”  

4. No politics: The NFL is sticking to football—and steering clear of politics. During the height of the Colin Kaepernick–inspired player protests for social justice from 2016 to ’17, the league’s regular-season TV audiences fell 8% and 10%, respectively. But once the NFL (and NBA, for that matter) decided to keep politics off the field, some of their missing viewers came flocking back. 

5. Draws casual viewers: The Super Bowl’s secret TV sauce is its ability to attract audiences at viewing parties who don’t give a damn about football. Some tune in just to watch the halftime show. Others watch the funny commercials. Some watch just to make sure they’re not left out of the water cooler conversation come Monday morning at the office. A study by Seton Hall University found 46% of Super Bowl viewers watched for the halftime show or the commercials, just slightly less than the 49% watching the game itself.

6. Out of home: Super Bowl broadcasters always suspected their real viewership was undercounted. That changed when Nielsen finally included so-called “out of home” viewing measurements, which include people watching the game in bars, restaurants, and dorm rooms. As Jon Lewis wrote in Sports Media Watch: “Out-of-home is likely to contribute at least 12-13 million additional viewers who would not have been counted in prior years, making all the difference in historical comparisons to years when the Nielsen audience solely consisted of in-home viewing.”

7. Close game: Finally, there’s nothing like a close, competitive game to drive TV numbers. The Chiefs’ 25–22 win over the 49ers was only the second overtime game in Super Bowl history—and came within seconds of being the first to reach double overtime. That’s why Super Bowl broadcasters don’t root for teams; they root for nail-biters. Mahomes’s Chiefs’ close wins against the 49ers and Eagles the past two seasons shattered TV records. When they lost a 31–9 blowout to Tom Brady’s Buccaneers in 2021, 20 million fewer viewers tuned in (101.6 million). 

Paramount Slashes 800 Employees

Two days after CBS pulled the highest audience in TV history, parent company Paramount Global laid off an estimated 800 employees. The cutbacks will impact about 3% of Paramount’s global headcount, according to Deadline, which first reported the planned downsizing in January. At press time, it was unclear if or how many CBS Sports employees would be impacted. Or whether any of the nearly 1,000 CBS executives and staffers who traveled to Las Vegas this week to cover the Big Game were losing their jobs. 

One former CBS staffer source tells me executives had been warning for months that they “were going to trim the fat.” CBS’s venerable pregame show, The NFL Today, could also be in for a cast shakeup, with the contracts of Phil Simms, Boomer Esiason, and Bill Cowher all expiring this season. Still, some thought it was a bit rich for CEO Bob Bakish to beat his chest about the Super Bowl in an internal memo detailing the layoffs. “We are coming off a blockbuster event with Super Bowl LVIII that showcased the full power of Paramount,” wrote Bakish. As Chicago Tribune critic Nina Metz posted on X (formerly known as Twitter): “Pretty insensitive to include this in a memo announcing layoffs.” CBS declined to comment.

Prime Video, CBS Want Jason Kelce, Too

The chase is on by NFL TV partners to hire Jason Kelce. My network TV sources tell me Amazon Prime Video and CBS met with the popular Eagles center in Las Vegas during Super Bowl week. I previously reported Kelce also met with ESPN and Fox in Vegas about launching a TV career if he retires after 13 seasons. 

Amazon makes a lot of sense for Kelce. He made a live appearance in the Thursday Night Football booth this season with Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit. Amazon’s documentary Kelce about Jason and brother Travis’s road to Super Bowl LVII ranked as one of Prime Video’s most-watched documentary films ever in the U.S.

Kelce hasn’t made up his mind about returning for a 14th NFL season. But he’ll never have more leverage with TV executives than he has right now. The only current player who might get a bigger offer is his little brother, said one talent agent in Vegas who declined to be named.

Redick Poised to Join ESPN’s Top NBA Team

JJ Redick, the former Duke University and NBA sharpshooter, has had a meteoric rise since joining ESPN in late 2021. Now he’ll get a crack at calling the NBA Finals. ESPN is poised to add Redick to its lead NBA broadcast team of Mike Breen and Doris Burke, say sources close to ESPN’s thinking. Redick would replace Doc Rivers, who recently returned to the NBA as head coach of the Bucks after only a few months on the job with ESPN. The new three-person booth is expected to be officially announced after the All-Star break. They will call all of ESPN/ABC’s big regular-season games, conference finals, and Finals in June. FOS first reported June 18 that Redick had emerged as a “front-runner” to join ESPN’s top NBA team.

Michael McCarthy’s “Tuned In” column is at your fingertips every week with the latest insights and ongoings around sports media. If he hears it, you will, too.