Despite massive Super Bowl audience, streaming almost matches linear for February 2025

By Mike Florio

The world has changed.

Linear TV keeps shrinking. Streaming keeps growing.

The latest example comes from the numbers generated in February 2025. Via Rick Porter of the Hollywood Reporter, the split between TV use between broadcast/cable and streaming was nearly identical. For broadcast (21.2 percent) and cable (23.2 percent), the combined number was 44.4 percent. For streaming, the percentage was 43.5 percent.

Despite massive Super Bowl audience, streaming almost matches linear for February 2025 – NBC Sports

That happened despite the massive linear audience for the Super Bowl, which had average viewership in excess of 127 million. Of course, that was just one game. The end of the bulk of the 2024 pro and college football seasons resulted in more people opting for streaming over broadcast/cable.

The numbers show that broadcast TV still has a place in the modern consumption model. Sure, it’s not what it once was. But it’s still the best way for the NFL to maximize an audience for a live event.

No one knows how much longer that will last. Still, except more — not fewer — streaming deals with the next round of NFL broadcast contracts are negotiated at the end of the current decade.