Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles were not the only big winners on Sunday night.

Fox Sports announced on Monday evening that its Super Bowl 59 broadcast of Philadelphia’s 40-22 rout of Kansas City drew a projected audience of 126 million viewers across Fox, Fox Deportes, Tubi, Telemundo and NFL digital properties.

That makes Sunday’s game the most-watched Super Bowl of all-time, topping last year’s record Super Bowl audience of 123.7 million viewers on CBS. Two years ago the Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl drew a record 115.1 million viewers on Fox. Yes, these games were boosted by out-of-home viewership but they topped last year’s mark which is an apples-to-apples comparison. The average audience has long been used to determine the most-watched game as opposed to the peak audience.

Fox executives are expecting the final Nielsen number to be slightly higher than the projection they announced Monday. That will come in on Tuesday.

Super Bowl 59 peaked at 135.7 million viewers from 8-8:15 p.m. ET in the second quarter, per the network. Fox also cited a record audience for streaming viewership as the company announced Tubi alone delivered 13.6 million viewers, while Tubi and NFL digital properties combined for 14.5 million.

Many who cover sports media predicted a new record would be set, including The Athletic, but the major surprise here was seeing a record set in a blowout. Generally, televised sporting events see a drop if the margin of victory gets out of hand. An industry source said the game held steady viewership for most of the second half until dropping late in the fourth quarter. The official number for Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show will be out on Tuesday. Mike Mulvihill, the Fox Sports head of Insights and Analytics, projected the halftime audience number at 131.2 million viewers.

Last night’s Eagles rout of the Chiefs will go down as the new most-watched Super Bowl of all time.

FOX conservatively projects 126 million viewers for the game, 131.2m for the halftime and a peak of 135.7m.

Final updated numbers coming from Nielsen in the morning. https://t.co/Y86DBvT0pT

— Michael Mulvihill (@mulvihill79) February 11, 2025

If you are looking for why this happened, there is always significant publicity for every Super Bowl matchup, but this one was boosted by two teams that have been viewership draws in recent years, especially the Chiefs. There was also major viewership momentum heading in. The clash between the Chiefs and Bills was the most-watched AFC Championship Game on record and averaged 57.7 million viewers. And perhaps some were curious about hearing Tom Brady call his first Super Bowl.