It was a blowout, with the Philadelphia Eagles up over the Kansas City Chiefs 34 – 0 early in the third quarter. The Half Time show with Kendrick Lamar? Pretty much meh. The commercials? Not that great this year.
Add it all up and is it any surprise that the Super Bowl audience in Canada this year was as flat as American beer?
Bottom line, the Super Bowl audience was down about 1.5 million year-to-year on CTV and TSN combined. Sunday’s tally in TV meter overnights: Super Bowl LIX (6:38 p.m. to 10:17 pm) drew 4,695,000 CTV viewers ages 2+. Last year in 2024? The CTV take was much more robust at 6,261,000. On TSN, the year-to-year ages 2+ numbers were pretty much unchanged: 2,435,000 on Sunday; 2,333,000 in 2024.
The lopsides final score of 40 to 22 for the Eagles also impacted the post-Super Bowl TV audience. The 19-minutes of confetti and trophy swapping drew an estimated 2,855,000 Sunday night on CTV, down from the 4,216,000 who watched the Chiefs and Taylor Swift take their bows in 2024.
Had the game been tighter, most likely those numbers would have gone up. The question must be asked, however: after all the tarriff talk, the 51st state baiting, did Canada just not have the stomach for the red, white and blue guacamole fest this February?
A look at the projected US ratings for Super Bowl LIX would back that theory. According to the Programming Insider, Fox expects a final number of around 126 million viewers once viewers watching on streaming partners such as Tubi and NFL digital properties are tallied. That would beat last year’s record of 123.7 million on CBS, Paramount+ and other partners.
advertisement
Canadians, on the other hand, could be excused for not feeling it. As much as I like Samuel L. Jackson, seeing him at halftime dressed as Uncle Sam was all I needed to grab the Rogers remote and say, “Turner Classic Movies.”
Canadians were likely in no mood to watch 47 work the sidelines prior to the first snap. Please, Eagles, give the White House a pass for us.
Usually the Super Bowl gives a boost to the lucky show that gets scheduled right afterward, but this year, CTV’s broadcast of Rescue Hi-Surf drew a mere 576,000. Tracker, the CBS show that followed Super Bowl LVIII, did 1,177,000 on CTV the year before.
Performing above low expectations, for me anyway, was Tom Brady in the Fox booth. The QB-turned-commentator was more animated than he had been during the regular season, perhaps cheered by the fact Kansas QB Patrick Mahomes kept getting sacked right out of any GOAT talk.
That Kendrick Lamar was trolling Drake during his 13-minute halftime arobics yakker only made things creepier for Canadian viewers. Backed by red, white and blue cheerleaders and SZA, the guy was basically there to diss Drake, subbing a word or two in an attempt to duck more lawsuits from the Canadian rapper.
Hopefully next year the NFL will book Hedley Lemar from Blazing Saddles instead of Kendrick Lamar.
