Super Bowl broadcasts dominate the list of the most-viewed live programs in the history of American television, including around 100 million television viewers every year over the last two decades.

The biggest televised sporting event of the year has breached 110 million viewers multiple times. The last two years included over 10 million viewers who weren’t watching on traditional television but instead through streaming services as millions have hopped on the cord-cutting trend.

The NFL is at the forefront of pushing consumer behavior into streaming. This season, the League aired 16 regular season games exclusively on streaming services — 15 from Amazon Prime Video and one from Peacock — plus its first-ever playoff game exclusively on Peacock during the Wild Card round.

Related: Peacock was a big winner with its streaming NFL Playoff game, defying social media backlash

The viewership numbers on both Prime Video and Peacock were positive (relative to being new and behind a paywall). Still, many complained about needing to jump through different hoops to watch the game.

The slew of options also has people wondering if it will affect Super Bowl viewership now or in the future.

Day, time, and channel: How to watch Super Bowl LVIII

If you’re worried about streaming services affecting how you watch the Super Bowl this year, don’t fret. You will be able to watch the Super Bowl this year as normal.

Super Bowl LVIII will air on CBS on Sunday, February 11, 2024, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time, 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time.

Can I watch the Super Bowl without cable? How to stream it live

However, there are several new viewing options this year for those who have already cut the cord on cable — or may want a more kid-friendly viewing experience.

Is the Super Bowl on Paramount+?

Paramount+, the streaming service for the Paramount-owned CBS, will be streaming the game on its app. The broadcast on the streaming service is expected to be the same as on linear television — and the broadcast won’t be exclusive to the streamer.

Super Bowl LVIII on Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon will be simulcasting the Super Bowl for the first time ever. The Paramount-owned kids channel has simulcast a handful of NFL games in the past — starting in 2021 — which has allowed them to add a few million viewers to the overall viewership number.

The past broadcasts featured commentary and different augmented reality features. Expect to see characters from hit shows like SpongeBob Squarepants and the infamous Nickelodeon slime cannons.

Will you ever need Peacock — or any other streamer — to watch the Super Bowl?

The short answer is no, there’s no reason to worry about how to watch the Super Bowl — or at least not yet.

NBC’s decision to air exclusively on Peacock was likely a test of the power of an NFL playoff game. While they were able to attract 23 million average viewers, that still is lower than the average NFL playoff game.

The Super Bowl attracts five times more viewers than that, and while an exclusively-streamed Super Bowl should get a lot of viewers to subscribe, advertisers who are buying slots to air famously expensive Super Bowl commercials are surely not yet anticipating the cut in viewership that a paywall will likely result in.

There’s also concern about the quality of the broadcast. Peacock and Amazon Prime Video have generally done well with buffering for their live broadcasts, but there is a huge difference between streaming for tens of millions and a hundred million.

But there is one interesting thing about the broadcast of the NFL that might be worth remembering.

The future of Super Bowl broadcasting

The NFL signed a media rights deal in 2021 with five different broadcasters: NBC, Fox, CBS, ESPN/ABC, and Amazon Prime Video. The deal was for $110 billion over 11 years — and it started this season.

Each of the broadcasters has the rights to air certain games. For example, NBC gets “Sunday Night Football,” ESPN and ABC get “Monday Night Football,” and Prime Video has “Thursday Night Football.”

Part of the deal is also the revolving rights of the Super Bowl. On its own, the blowout game could garner a huge sum — but instead, its revenue is divided among the broadcasters. In the last deal, it was only divided by three — Fox, NBC, and CBS — and those three networks have rotated the Super Bowl broadcasts for nearly two decades.

That means that every year, there’s a different broadcaster of the game.

But that changed in the last media rights deal because ESPN/ABC returned to the rotation. The Disney-owned outlets will get to air two Super Bowls within this media rights deal in 2027 and 2031.

The schedule of Super Bowl broadcasters over the course of this media rights deal is as follows:

Where to watch the Super Bowl 2024–2034

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