Last year, Super Bowl LVII between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers was record breaking in many ways. According to the NFL, the telecast of the 2024 Super Bowl was the most watched telecast in history, beating out the previous record holder: the literal moon landing.
On average, 123.7 million people were tuned into see the Chiefs win over the 49ers in overtime, with over 200 million total viewers. What will the numbers look like this year?
There were so many highlights to the Super Bowl, including how women were front of mind in many of the day's events.
Obviously, the biggest storyline of the NFL season was Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's relationship, and that surely played a part in these viewership and betting numbers.
Women took over the betting scene
One unique thing about last years' Super Bowl, apart from the viewership, the wild ending, and the star power was the betting landscape.
Now, we know betting has been integrated into football for years now, but just gets so much bigger for the Super Bowl. Everything from the color of the sports drink poured onto the winning coach, to the coin toss, to the first song in the halftime show can be bet on.
Women are making their mark! Super Bowl LVIII was a huge example of that. According to BetMGM, the amount of women who bet on the Super Bowl in all capacities increased by 51% from 2023 to 2024.
While there were a lot of Taylor Swift themed betting props last year, but depending on location, betting outside the purview of the actual football game was not allowed. One popular prop circulating the internet though was whether or not Travis Kelce was going to propose to Swift after the Chiefs won -- but he did not.
In total, $20 billion dollars was wagered on the Super Bowl in America alone.
Viewership numbers on the rise
Along with the increase of women bettors at the Super Bowl, there was also an increase of female viewership. Obviously, Taylor Swift's integration into the NFL space was a huge part of this leap, but there were a lot of other pulls for women in the overall telecast of the Super Bowl.
As mentioned in the article linked above, the Super Bowl did a lot to cater to its newfound audience this year. The broadcast was enjoyable whether you understood what was happening on the field or not.
Women accounted for 47.5% of the Super Bowl's total audience, a number up over 7% from last year's broadcast. 58.8 million women total watched the broadcast.
The biggest leap was in the age 18-24 demographic, where there were 24% more female viewers in 2024 than for the Super Bowl in 2023. Again, likely a result of the Taylor Swift effect.
Yet, the NFL is doing everything the league can to entice those viewers to keep tuning in, regardless of whether Swift and Kelce go the distance. They granted female fashion designer Kristin Juszczyk rights to use the NFL branding in her work, something that will help both sides in marketing more to their constantly increasing female audience.
Social media also played a factor in retaining these viewers as well, with NFL social media teams playing into the Swift mania.
Overall, women are making themselves right at home in the NFL's landscape - and this year we'll like see more women than 2024 bet on the big game. It's definitely made the sport as a whole a little more inclusive of women, something other sports could probably take a lesson from.
It will be interesting to see how these numbers carry on into this season.
Chelsea Leite
Casino Writer
