Super Bowl LIII had the lowest TV rating in 10 years, and that’s not because the game was boring.
The rating was low from the get-go, long before it became Punt-Fest 2019.
“When we started the game . . . we were doing a 35 rating in the first quarter,” Jim Nantz, who handled the play-by-play of Super Bowl LIII for CBS, said on Thursday’s Dan Patrick Show. “Our AFC Championship game . . . we had a bigger rating in the fourth quarter and overtime of Kansas City-New England than we did in the first quarter-and-a-half of the Super Bowl. We had less of an audience in the Super Bowl than we did at the end of the AFC Championship.”
So why were the numbers so low right out of the gates? Nantz agreed that Patriots fatigue coupled with L.A.’s slow embrace of the Rams had something to do with it.
Regardless of the reason, it’s odd that the Super Bowl ratings — which at this point should be immune to the matchup — would start so sluggishly.
