This year's Super Bowl broke the all-time record for online streaming, as millions of people tuned in to watch the Broncos trounce the Panthers across multiple platforms.

Nearly 4 million people tuned in to watch Super Bowl 50 live online, according to statistics released by CBS.

That figure pales in comparison to the total estimated viewership for the biggest football game of the year, which, according to Nielsen, bought in an average of 111.9 million viewers to watch the Denver Broncos win 24 to 10 against the Carolina Panthers.

More Digital Access Across More Platforms

However, the live streaming total -- 3.96 million unique viewers, with access measured across laptops, desktops, tablets, smart TVs, connected TV boxes, and smartphones -- still surpasses any previous event in history for online streaming.

Part of the reason for such record numbers is the broad array of devices and services that were granted access by CBS to the Super Bowl live stream this year, without needing to prove entry credentials through a cable or satellite TV login.

This year, the live stream of the NFL's big event was made available on CBSSports.com for PCs, laptops, and tablets, as well as the CBS Sports app for iPad, Android, and Windows 10 tablets.

Connected TVs made a big impact, too. Live streaming the game on CBS's Sports app was also made available on a large swath of connected TV devices, including the Amazon Fire TV, Android TV (Nexus Player), Apple TV, Chromecast, all Roku players, the Xbox One, and Roku-enabled smart TVs from Haier, HiSense, Insignia, TCL and Sharp. In addition, Verizon provided access to the game from its partnership through the NFL Mobile app on smartphones, along with the NFL on Xbox experience.

Breaking Down the Numbers

In all, this year's Super Bowl peaked with an average of 115.5 million viewers from about 8:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ET, making it the third most-watched program in television history, CBS boasted.

Breaking down the view count even further, CBS said that more than 402 million total minutes of Super Bowl coverage were consumed, with a retention rate of 101 minutes for each viewer on average. During the game, more than 315 minutes of coverage were watched, with an audience of about 1.4 million watching, on average, each minute of the game.

For comparison, the live stream of last year's Super Bowl 49 garnered more than 1.3 million viewers, the highest number of users at the time. That year's viewership consumed a record (for the time) average of 800,000 views per minute, along with 213 million total minutes consumed through an online webcast, according to TechCrunch. The previous year, when Fox broadcast the 2014 Super Bowl, its live stream peaked at 1.1 million viewers, with 528,000 viewers per minute on average.

Biggest Latino Audience for North American Football

CBS didn't count the number of Spanish-language viewers on ESPN Deportes, which it partnered with this year in order to provide original Spanish-language coverage of the game, along with pre-game and post-game reports.

But according to industry journal MultiChannel, ESPN Deportes' first Spanish-language Super Bowl telecast on Sunday drew an average of 472,000 NFL fans, making it the biggest non-soccer audience in the networks' history, and a 51 percent increase in viewership compared to Super Bowl 49's Spanish-language telecast on NBC Universo.

For digital Latinos watching the big game on WatchESPN, Super Bowl 50 was ESPN Deportes' fifth most-watched event ever, with an average of 5,600 live streamers per minute, 29,000 unique viewers, and a total of 1.5 million minutes viewed on average.