Record Super Bowl Rating Is Unlikely

The Super Bowl drew an average Neilsen rating of 43.5 with a 61% share of the audience in the overnight ratings from the nation’s nine major television markets, ABC announced Monday.

The nine major markets are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas and Washington, D.C.

In Los Angeles, the game got a rating of 44.8 with a 74 share. In San Francisco, it got a 55.1 with an 82 share.

Last year’s Super Bowl got an overnight rating of 44.1, but that rating came from only six markets--New York, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and San Francisco. The average in just those six markets for this year’s game was 44.2.

The national rating last year was 46.4. The national rating for this year’s game is expected to be available today.

The highest Super Bowl rating ever was 49.1, for the 1982 game between the San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals. That game got a 53.2 rating in San Francisco and a 91 share.