Super Bowl LI Overnight Ratings Slightly Down From Last Two Years
Ryan Mayer
Last night's epic comeback mounted by the New England Patriots to win their fifth Super Bowl 34-28 over the Atlanta Falcons featured one of the more entertaining endings in recent memory. However, the game up until the fourth quarter was a bit of a slower affair, with the Falcons racing out to a 21-3 lead at the half and holding a seemingly insurmountable 28-9 lead at the end of three quarters. That may help explain the slight down tick that the NFL's premiere event experienced this year in the television ratings.
Austin Karp, of SportsBusiness Daily, reported this morning that the overnight rating for Super Bowl LI clocked in at a 48.8 which was down ever so slightly from last year's 49.0 for Broncos-Panthers and the 49.7 rating earned by the Seahawks and Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX.
That said, as Karp went on to note, that 48.8 rating is still better than any rating that the league garnered in the nine years prior to 2015.
One other curious note when it comes to the ratings for last night's game. You would expect the Boston or Atlanta markets to have the highest rating for the Super Bowl considering that their two teams were the ones playing in the game. That wasn't the case last night according to Michael Mulvihill.
In fact, Boston didn't even come in the Top 5 of market-ratings last night, posting a 54.3 which was good for eighth among markets.
One things to keep in mind about the ratings being slightly down, is that these are just the overnight ratings. We'll get a more complete picture of the ratings for last night's game likely later in the day today.
