Causation = / = correlation.
Super Bowl's become more popular over time in general. We saw increased viewership from 1966 until 2016. The NFL is doing a great job of marketing it every year.
However, starting in 2016, numbers actually started to decrease.
One thing I will say is that I didnt consider the Swift angle too much when I made my original post, or I wouldn't have made it. Her fans may make the difference and put it over the edge. I was simply talking from an NFL fan perspective.
This is not accurate.
Last years Super Bowl had an all-platform viewership of 115.1M.
The most watcher Super Bowl ever had over 126M. The second most watched had 119M. The third most watched had 118.5M. The fourth most watched had 115.8M.
Last years Super Bowl wasn't in the top 4.
You can see the rankings here.
The reason you think it was the most watched telecast ever is because you fell for the clickbait Nielsen advertisement where they said that. However, what they didn't tell you is that they didn't start accounting for out-of-home streaming until 2021. So the 2022 Super Bowl was the most watched telecast of their new rating metric.... that came out in 2021. So, it was the most watched of 2021 or 2022.