Rihanna’s Super Bowl Performance: The Most-Watched In History
Rihanna’s reign just won’t let up. The superstar now officially has the most-watched Super Bowl Halftime performance in history. According to a recent Nielsen report, Rihanna’s halftime show — her first live performance in almost five years — garnered 121 million viewers on February 12. The Associated Press reports that Neilson revised its original data which upped the “Diamonds” singer’s viewers from by 2 million “after a review that revealed encoding irregularities as well as issues with out-of-home measurement.” Rihanna’s total views went from 118.7 million to 121 million.
Rihanna’s new number surpassed the previous record that was set in 2015. The 2015 Super Bowl was between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, which attracted 114.442 million people. Streaming was not included in that data. For the Halftime Show, Katy Perry was the headliner and brought out Lenny Kravitz and rapper Missy Elliott as special guests.
As part of Rihanna’s now history-making performance, she announced she was pregnant with her and A$AP Rocky’s second child. The two welcomed their son last May, whose name has not yet been announced.
The singer performed a medley of her biggest tracks. Her setlist was:
“Bitch Better Have My Money”
“Where Have You Been”
“Only Girl”
“We Found Love”
“Rude Boy”
“Work”
“Wild Thoughts”
“Pour It Up”
“All Of The Lights”
“Run This Town”
“Diamonds”
RELATED: Rihanna: How Much Did She Get Paid For Her Super Bowl Performance?
During the press conference prior to her performance, Rihanna described what it was like to get the call to do the Super Bowl.
“When I first got the call to do it again this year, I was like, [hisses] ‘You sure?’ I’m three months postpartum,” RiRi previously said per Billboard. “Should I be making major decisions like this right now? I might regret this. But when you become a mom, there’s something that just happens where you feel like you can take on the world. The Super Bowl is one of the biggest stages in the world, so as scary as that was because I haven’t been on stage in seven years, there’s something exhilarating about the challenge of it all … It’s important for my son to see that.”
Rihanna: Watch Her Full Super Bowl Halftime Performance
