FOX Deportes Set Super Bowl Spanish-Language Viewership Records on Cable, Streaming

The Super Bowl is always one of the most viewed live events of the year. However, as cable and broadcast viewership continues to decline, alternative methods of viewing the big game are coming more and more into fashion. Sunday’s Super Bowl LVII broadcast on the FOX app landed the most streaming viewers for the Big Game ever, showing that even in this new era of entertainment, people will still tune into the biggest sporting events of the year.

But this doesn’t mean that broadcast viewing of sporting events is going extinct, especially within the Spanish-language community. Take for instance FOX Deportes, FOX’s Spanish-language sports channel, which reportedly also set viewership records with its broadcast of Super Bowl LVII with 951,000 total viewers according to Nielsen.

🚨The numbers are in! @FOXDeportes broadcast of #SuperBowlLVII sets multiple viewership records🔥 pic.twitter.com/9P6olnhGKh

— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) February 14, 2023

It wasn’t just a record-breaking broadcast, but a record-shattering one. It was the most-watched Super Bowl in Spanish-language cable history, with a massive 25% jump from the previous year’s broadcast in both linear and digital formats. It also was the most watched non-soccer sporting event in Spanish-language cable history. This year’s Super Bowl was also FOX Deportes’ most streamed event of all time.

These impressive numbers are a testament to the rising popularity of American football in Spanish-speaking markets as well as the growth in the viewers of FOX Deportes itself. Even before this massive uptick in viewers, streaming services have been taking notice of the opportunities available with Spanish-language content, especially when it comes to sports.

Spanish-language viewership has increased across all domestic media recently, but major examples of the importance of multilingual audiences are driving the point home. Last year’s FIFA World Cup drove incredible engagement for Peacock in the United States, despite the fact that the NBCUniversal streaming service was only carrying the matches in Spanish. This success was followed by a further investment into thee sport as Peacock and Telemundo became the official Spanish-language home of U.S. Soccer National teams.

With more sports, events, and general entertainment available in Spanish to American audiences, viewers are proving that there is plenty of appetite for this kind of content. That desire for Spanish-language programming is becoming harder and harder for streamers and networks to ignore. While records continue to be set, these platforms will need to adapt to the changing world and make moves toward creating and distributing more Spanish-language content than ever before.