The accounting has been done—at least in part—and unsurprisingly, ratings were down for Super Bowl LII, in which Philadelphia bested those annoying New England Patriots 41-33 for its first-ever Super Bowl win.
Whether you didn’t watch out of protest against the treatment of former quarterback Colin Kaepernick (as more than 200,000 who signed this petition did) or because … well, that would be the only reason to boycott, right? No, seriously, maybe you didn’t watch because your team wasn’t in the game, or maybe you have Patriots fatigue, or whatever.
The point is that the Super Bowl game followed the same path as regular-season games, which, according to Deadline, hit double-digit ratings drops this season. The Super Bowl LII number in metered markets was 47.4, which many say is a mixed bag.
Deadline reports that numbers for the 2018 Super Bowl fell 3 percent over last year’s game. And although it was the sixth-highest-rated Super Bowl ever, numbers were down 5 percent from the last time NBC aired the football championship in 2015, when the Patriots met up with Russell Wilson’s Seattle Seahawks.
When it’s all said and done, Super Bowl LII is currently the lowest rated since Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, when the New Orleans Saints beat the crap out of the Indianapolis Colts on CBS.
As it now stands, the Patriots’ winning Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 currently holds the title of most watched ever, with 114.4 million viewers.
In better news for NBC, the highly hyped episode of This Is Us was the highest-rated episode so far.
Here are the top five highest-rated Super Bowls of all time:
- 2015: 49.7—Super Bowl XLIX: New England Patriots vs. Seattle Seahawks (NBC)
- 2016: 49.0—Super Bowl 50: Denver Broncos vs. Carolina Panthers (CBS)
- 2017: 48.8—Super Bowl LI: New England Patriots vs. Atlanta Falcons (Fox)
- 2013: 48.1—Super Bowl XLVII: Baltimore Ravens vs. San Francisco 49ers (CBS)
- 2011: 47.9—Super Bowl XLV: Green Bay Packers vs. Pittsburgh Steelers (Fox)