The numbers are in, and this year’s Super Bowl between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs wasn’t a big hit.

Only 96 million people watched the game on Sunday night, which is the lowest viewership for a Super Bowl since 2007. Dom Caristi, a telecommunications professor at Ball State University believes there are multiple reasons for the low numbers.

“There are people who watch no other football game all year, but they will watch the Super Bowl,” Caristi said. “Largely because they are invited to a party, where they’re going to be with friends and eat a bunch of food.”

However, this year, he says there weren’t as many people throwing big parties to watch the game because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Another reason Caristi believes viewership and ratings were lower than normal was because of the two teams that were playing.

“Yeah, you had people talking about the quarterback matchup between Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes, but really, a large majority of people didn’t find interest in the teams,” he said. “They’re from smaller markets. Tampa Bay and Kansas City are not New York, Los Angeles, Chicago.”

Caristi added the fact that the game being a blowout didn’t help keep people glued to the television. Tampa Bay won 31-9, giving Brady his seventh career Super Bowl victory.

While the TV viewership numbers were the lowest in more than a decade, CBS says Sunday’s game was the most live-streamed NFL game ever, averaging nearly six million viewers per minute, whether that was on Hulu, YouTube TV or another streaming service. Caristi believes that trend will continue in the future.

“We’re going to see the streaming numbers continue to grow little by little over time, as more and more people are no longer paying for cable,” he said. “But, keep in mind, we’re talking about TV numbers above 90 million, and we’re talking about streaming numbers at 5.7 million, so we’re talking about five percent of the number of people watching on TV. It’s got room to grow every year and still be a deep second place to over-the-air broadcasts.”