2021 events: How many people watched the 2021 Oscars, Super Bowl and Grammy Awards?
This year's Oscars are expected to have a crowd of spectators, a change from 2021, where the audience was limited due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The 2022 Oscars take place on Sunday 27 March. The show was previously scheduled for 27 February 2022, but shifted back to this new date. We take a look at how many watched the Oscars in 2021, as well as the Super Bowl and Grammy Awards.
Super Bowl grows year on year
The 2022 Super Bowl drew an estimated 101.1 million television viewers as the Rams beat the Bengals. That was a 6% increase on the 95.2 million TV viewers who watched the Tampa Bay Buccaneers became champions in 2021, the Nielsen company reported.
The ratings improvement for what is usually the most-watched event of the year didn't come as a major surprise, given some of the thrilling playoff games leading up to it. Viewership for the NFL's divisional round was up 20% over last year, and the conference championships were up 10%, according to Nielsen.
Grammy Awards viewership
According to statista.com, in 2021, just 8.8 million Americans watched the Grammy Awards ceremony, well down from over 18 million a year earlier. Viewership has been declining for several years. The Grammys are not the only awards show to have been hit by viewer losses. Questions about the appeal and relevance of awards shows to the US public have been raised after years of declining viewer numbers for the Golden Globes, the MTV Video Music Awards and the Oscars.
How many people watched the Oscars?
Last year, viewership for the annual Oscars fell to a new low, with 10.4 million people watching to find out which film claimed the best picture prize, as reported by Nielsen data. It was a drop of nearly 56% from the 23.6 million viewers that tuned in for the program in 2020.