Carrie Underwood’s ‘The Champion’ Scores 444% Boost From Super Bowl

Super Bowl LII was watched by an estimated 103.4 million viewers on Sunday, and exposure of that magnitude definitely didn’t hurt any of the artists featured during the big game. One of those artists was Carrie Underwood, whose music video for her sports anthem “The Champion” opened the proceedings.

According to Billboard, the track received a 444 percent sales gain, notching 16,000 downloads sold on Feb. 4, up from 3,000 the previous day.

Underwood penned the track with Chris DeStefano, Brett James and Ludacris.

“When we were writing “The Champion,” our main focus was to celebrate athletes at the top of their game, but we also wanted the song to resonate with people in their everyday lives,” Underwood said in a press release. “We hope the lyrics will inspire people to push themselves beyond their limits to conquer anything they are trying to accomplish or overcome. There’s a champion in every single one of us!”

Along with the Super Bowl, “The Champion” will also be used during the upcoming PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games, which begin airing Feb. 9 on NBC and will likely give the singer another bump in downloads.

Super Bowl halftime performer Justin Timberlake also had a huge boost in sales after his set, with songs he performed during halftime seeing a collective sales gain of 534 percent. Timberlake sang hits including “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” from the Trolls soundtrack, “Rock Your Body” from his album Justified and “Filthy,” the lead single from new album Man of the Woods.

Timberlake also included a tribute to the late singer Prince in his performance, singing the star’s hit “I Would Die 4 U.”

Photo Credit: Twitter / @SNFonNBC