Did Super Bowl LV Break All-Time Record 144 Million Viewers?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Feb 8, 7:09AM EST · Published Feb 8, 5:09AM EST

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Did Super Bowl LV Break All-Time Record 144 Million Viewers? — © George Gojkovich / Getty Images

Tom Brady, with yesterday’s Super Bowl win, has played in 10 of 55 of the games. That is a record that will almost certainly not be broken. Rating experts believe that this Super Bowl could set a U.S. viewership record because so many people will need to watch from home, and not in groups.

Super Bowl LX will need to be watched in 145 million American households to break the TV rating record. It was set on February 1, 2015, when Super Bowl XLIX was played. Brady led the New England Patriots against the Seattle Seahawks. The game was won by the Patriots in the final seconds with a final score of 28–24. The game had 114,442,000 views.

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According to 24/7 Wall St., even with Brady’s magic, New England is tied for the most Super Bowl losses:

New England Patriots
> Super Bowl losses: 5
> Super Bowls lost in: 1986, 1997, 2008, 2012, 2018
> Super Bowl wins: 6
> All-time winning pct.: 54.5%

Before coach Bill Belichick and QB Tom Brady teamed up to win six rings, the New England Patriots had never won a Super Bowl. The team had lost in two title games previously — to the vaunted 1985 Bears and Brett Favre’s Green Bay Packers in 1997. Since then, the New England Patriots have appeared in nine Super Bowls.

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The Pats won three titles from 2002 to 2005 but lost their bid at a perfect season in 2008 when the underdog Giants toppled them 17-14. New York would again spoil the Patriots’ party in 2012 with stout defensive play, beating New England 21-17 in Super Bowl XLVI. Most recently, New England lost Super Bowl LII to Nick Foles and the Philadelphia Eagles in one of the wildest and most memorable shootouts in NFL history.

The next most-watched game was the year before. Super Bowl XLVIII was watched by 112,191,000 on February 2, 2014. Seattle beat the Denver Broncos by a score of 43 to 8. The third most-watched Super Bowl was Super Bowl 50, in which the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers 24 to 10. It was watched by 111,864,000 on February 7, 2016.

Denver is tied with New England for the most losses in a Super Bowl, according to 24/7 Wall St. figures:

Denver Broncos
> Super Bowl losses: 5
> Super Bowls lost in: 1978, 1987, 1988, 1990, 2014
> Super Bowl wins: 3
> All-time winning pct.: 37.5%

No team has lost more Super Bowls than the Denver Broncos. The team is tied with the New England Patriots with five Super Bowl defeats, but it has half the Lombardi Trophies, with three. In Denver’s first Super Bowl appearance, they were outclassed by Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys in 1978’s Super Bowl XII, losing 27-10.

The Broncos became regular playoff fixtures after acquiring QB John Elway but couldn’t get over the hump, losing three Super Bowls in 1987, 1988, and 1990. Elway and Denver would eventually win back-to-back titles in 1997 and 1998.

Denver’s next Super Bowl appearance came in 2014, with Peyton Manning at QB. That team was completely overwhelmed by the Seattle Seahawks defense, turning the ball over four times and losing 43-8. The team won their third Super Bowl two seasons later, as the Denver defense held the Carolina Panthers to just 10 points in a 24-10 win.

At the other end of the spectrum, Super Bowl XVI was watched by 85,240,000 on January 24, 1982. The San Francisco 49er behind the game’s MVP, Joe Montana, beat the Cincinnati Bengals by a score of 26 to 21.

Click here to see the teams that lost the most Super Bowls.

Click here to see what a Super Bowl ad cost the year you were born.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.