Sunday’s thrilling Super Bowl between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers received the highest overnight rating ever for a Super Bowl.
According to Nielsen, the Super Bowl had an overnight rating of 48.1/71, which means nearly half of all households in the country saw Baltimore defeat San Francisco 34-31 to win the franchise’s second Super Bowl title.
The rating, though, excludes the period from 8:45-9:15 PM EST, which was when the power outage occurred that left CBS broadcasters scrambling.
The highest-rated Super Bowl had been Fox’s telecast of Green Bay versus Pittsburgh in 2011, which received a 47.9/71 overnight rating. Last year’s Super Bowl between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots received at 47.8/71 overnight rating and was the most-watched television program ever with an audience of 111.3 million.