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Super Bowl Survey: Kansas City Fans Overcompensate with Extra Large TVs, Stream with No Protection

The latest PCMag survey on viewing habits for the Big Game indicates the methods the teams (and play-off also-rans) fans have to watch, and whether they'll keep their streaming services secure (spoiler: they won't).

 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

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What does it say about the fan base of the Kansas City Chiefs that so, so many of them plan to watch the team battle the San Francisco 49ers (in the Big Game on February 2) on televisions so large they take up the whole room?

The Why Axis BugIn a PCMag survey, we asked 2,239 people in the US via Google Surveys if they'd be watching the game, all so we could find a full 1,000 who plan to. Of those respondents, we asked how many planned to watch the game on a TV versus some other device, and whether they'd be streaming.

The Chiefs were the favorite team of 34 percent of respondents; the 49ers actually came in third, at 19 percent. More people—30 percent—wanted to see the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl. (The survey was conducted during the playoffs, so they had a right to a modicum of hope for the four-time Super Bowl winners to make a comeback.) What's more interesting is that more Chiefs fans than any other team—47 percent—have those ultra-large 4K TVs measuring at least 71 inches or more.

In a "size-does-matter" joke in the making, 49ers fans have the lowest amount of large TV screens. Ahem.

The average screen size, however, is a more standard range, between 46 and 70 inches measured diagonally.

TV Viewing: Average Screen Size

Few people want to watch the game on anything less.

This is, allegedly, the first year the Super Bowl will stream in 4K, but it's actually not a big deal—it's an upscaled 4K stream, not true 4K. Most 4K sets probably upscaled the game when streamed in the last couple of years. So don't expect to be overwhelmed by the image quality for 2020.

Sixty-two percent of respondents said they would be watching the commercials during the live viewing of the game. Here's an interesting data point that backs that up: 69 percent of them said they wouldn't be using any digital video recorder (DVR) functions—such as pause, fast forward, or, especially, rewind—during the live game! This behavior flies in the face of two decades of TiVo's existence, but it makes sense for anyone hosting live viewing parties who need to get people out of the house before they're too intoxicated.

Not too shockingly, very few homes will be using a virtual private network (VPN) to protect their connection; that's because few homes will be doing any actual streaming. They're going old-school with cable subscriptions (which someday may be as quaint as having a phone landline, but not yet). Among those who are streaming, the Chiefs fans were the least likely to use a VPN, at 4 percent.

VPN Usage by Team Supporters

49ers fans—a more tech-savvy bunch, perhaps, since they have to live amid Silicon Valley—up that number to 9 percent. The really safe fans would have been those of the Tennessee Titans at 10 percent—but the Titans, who have never won a Super Bowl, won't be changing that this year. If you want to be safe while streaming or doing anything else online, read The Best VPN Services of 2020.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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