Patriots truly a dynasty ... but Super Bowl LIII a true yawner
BULLS OF THE WEEK
When it comes to the bullishness of team success, no one can hold a candle to the New England Patriots.
They won their sixth Super Bowl last Sunday, tying them with the Pittsburgh Steelers for most in NFL history and putting ageless quarterback Tom Brady, genius head coach Bill Belichick and role model owner Robert Kraft into several leagues of their own.
Love ’em or hate ’em, no one can deny the Patriots are the quintessential professional sports dynasty of this generation.
This was their third consecutive Super Bowl appearance, fourth in the past five years and ninth in the Brady-Belichick-Kraft era.
They’ve made the playoffs 10 consecutive years on the strength of 10 AFC East divisional titles.
Their track record of success is impressive compared to any era in professional sport, but what Brady, Belichick and Kraft have achieved in the salary cap era is almost unfathomable. It’s little wonder that Brady — a four-time Super Bowl MVP and three-time NFL MVP who was the 199th selection in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft — is considered among the greatest quarterbacks of all time.
At an enterprise value of US$3.8 billion according to Forbes Magazine, the Brady-led Patriots are the second richest franchise in the NFL, third in all of North American sport, and sixth in the world behind only the Dallas Cowboys ($5 billion), Manchester United ($4.1 billion), Real Madrid ($4.09 billion), FC Barcelona ($4.06 billion) and the New York Yankees ($4 billion).
BEARS OF THE WEEK
No matter how impressive the Patriots are at winning, they can’t turn arguably the worst Super Bowl of all-time into a television ratings winner.
Their defensive-minded 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams was the lowest-scoring game in Super Bowl history. One lone touchdown late in the game is hardly the stuff of compelling football entertainment, and that translated into the poorest Super Bowl ratings in 11 years.
It was a remarkable anticlimax after the two overtime games in the conference championship round two weeks ago and a post-season that saw audiences for the wild-card weekend up 12 per cent, the divisional games up eight per cent, and the conference finals north of 10 per cent higher.
The Patriots-Rams yawner scored an average U.S. national audience of 98.2 million on CBS and a total audience delivery of 100.7 million, when one includes live streaming.
In Canada, more than seven million fans tuned in, with 4.45 million on CTV, CTV2 and TSN, and the balance watching the direct CBS feed. It was a far cry from the 114.4 million U.S. viewership and the more than eight million combined Canadian audience in 2015 when the Patriots stole victory from the jaws of defeat against the Seattle Seahawks.
The dull affair on the field in Atlanta wasn’t the only factor in the ratings decline. The halftime show — typically the most-watched part of the game and a strong springboard into the second half — underwhelmed with Adam Levine and Maroon 5, despite singing their hits Sugar, Girls Like You and Moves Like Jagger. The Sport Market on TSN 1040 AM rates and debates the bulls and bears of sport business. Join Tom Mayenknecht on Saturday from 7-11 a.m. for a behind-the-scenes look at the sport business stories that matter most to fans. Follow Mayenknecht on Twitter: @TheSportMarket