Is the Super Bowl more popular than the Melbourne Cup?

With the ever-growing presence of the NFL in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Andrew Webster has questioned whether the NFL’s premier event has overtaken the Melbourne Cup in Australia.

Super Bowl LVII proved to be a hit on free-to-air provider Seven, with a peak of 775,000 viewers tuning in to the season finale, in addition to an estimated 66,000 viewing on the 7plus streaming service.

Although the Melbourne Cup racked in a whopping 1.02 million viewers on free-to-air, Webster believes the younger demographic is slowly moving towards the Super Bowl as their preferred event.

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“I wrote this on Monday about the NFL’s rise, it was a cheeky headline saying it’s the new Melbourne Cup,” Webster said on SEN 1170 Mornings.

“For under 25s, there is certainly something more palatable for that demographic to go watch American Football on a Monday than to go watch a Melbourne Cup on the first Tuesday of November.”

Webster credited the shift in popularity to the accessibility of the NFL and the success of Australians in the NFL recently.

“It just gets stronger and stronger every year, I understand it’s not everyone’s cup of tea,” Webster said.

"I was talking to a chief executive from another sport, they said the staples of cricket, AFL and rugby union, those laws don’t apply anymore because unlike our generation where that’s all you had but because of all the game passes and ESPN here, they’re open up to a new demographic.

“I reckon they’ll (NFL Teams) definitely look at more (Australians)… everyone looks at Jarryd Hayne and what he did there in San Francisco, just to get onto the roster was an achievement in itself.”

The Melbourne Cup gathered just over 1.35 million viewers, a significant downgrade from the 1.69 million that tuned in for the 2021 race.