The Kansas City Chiefs are the new team you love to hate, and that could be fuel for another Super Bowl ratings record.
The defending champions inspire the kind of resentment once reserved for the Dallas Cowboys, from conspiracy theory memes of quarterback Patrick Mahomes exchanging gifts with the referees to online conservatives complaining about screen time given to Travis Kelce's girlfriend, Taylor Swift.
But emotion drives viewership and could be the ingredient that gives Fox a huge Nielsen number Sunday when the Chiefs try for an unprecedented third consecutive championship against the Philadelphia Eagles at the Superdome in New Orleans.
Last year's record audience of 123.4 million viewers watched the Chiefs top San Francisco 49ers in a narrow 25-22 victory in only the second Super Bowl overtime game in history. The scene of Swift and Kelce embracing on the field turned the event into a pop culture moment that created a perfect ratings storm.
The Chiefs and Eagles — who are the favorite of the betting public — set the previous audience record when they met in 2023. Even if the record isn't shattered, the impact of last year's performance solidified the Super Bowl's status as a touchstone for the national zeitgeist.
Each year's crop of advertisers says something about what's going on in the country, and 2025 will be no different. This year's notable newcomer: OpenAI.
OpenAI's first-ever commercial for its primary artificial intelligence tool, ChatGPT, will appear on the game. Previous Super Bowl advertisers Meta, GoDaddy, Salesforce and Google will all be touting their own AI products in their spots.
The influx of tech companies pushing their new technologies helped drive the price of some 30-second ads up to $8 million for Fox. The average price was over $7 million, Fox confirmed.
The tech ad buys helped offset a decline in demand from movie studios and streamers that long depended on the game to launch major releases, according to people briefed on the transactions but not authorized to comment publicly. It was the only category to see a decline from last year's game, reflecting belt-tightening by entertainment companies.
Viewers will see more ads for pharmaceuticals and travel. First-time Super Bowl advertisers include comfort brands such as Ritz crackers and Häagen-Dazs, perhaps a recognition of much of the nation's anxiety in the early days of a second Trump presidency.
One factor that could push Fox's Super Bowl audience to a new high is a streaming feed of the game that will be available on Tubi, Fox Corp.'s free ad-supported TV service, which is available to anyone with an internet connection. Last year's CBS telecast was streamed on Paramount+, which requires a subscription.
Tubi has 97 million users and a larger average audience than Paramount+, Comcast's Peacock and Warner Bros. Discovery's Max, according to Nielsen. In June, it also topped Disney+.
The Tubi stream will carry the same ads as the Fox telecast of the game. But the local commercial breaks will be replaced with national ads for the streaming audience, which fetched up to $2 million for a 30-second message, according to AdAge. Fox estimated that 8.5 million viewers will watch on the platform.
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The total streaming audience for last year's game on Paramount+ and the NFL app was around 3.5 million, according to Nielsen.
Tony Marlow, chief marketing officer for LG Ad Solutions, predicts as much as 28% of the total audience will watch the game on a streaming app thanks to the addition of Tubi. He believes Fox's Tubi move has the potential to increase the game's value as a TV property, as online viewers are more likely to interact with a brand's message, including through QR codes, during the telecast.
"I'm excited to see which advertisers will lean into this a little more as connected viewers have an ability to react more than linear viewers," Marlow said.
Mike Mulvihill, president of insights and analytics for Fox Sports, isn't making a prediction on the total audience for Super Bowl LIV. The regular season and playoffs experienced a slight decline in viewership. But Mulvihill said that is not a reliable indicator for this year's championship contest.
Mulvihill links the NFL's decline to the increased number of games on streaming platforms, which usually deliver smaller audiences than broadcast television. The poor performance of two of the league's glamour franchises, the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers, hurt as well, he said.
"Neither of those things are going to matter on Sunday," Mulvihill said.
The most watched game of the season so far is the Chiefs' win over the Buffalo Bills in the AFC championship game, which was watched by 57.5 million viewers on CBS.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
