NBC Crushes the Record With a 49.7 Rating During the Super Bowl

The average rating for the 2015 Super Bowl? An incredible 49.7, soundly beating the 47.6 rating for the Seahawks' domination of the Broncos in 2014 (and the previous record holder, the 2013 Ravens-49ers Super Bowl, which logged a 48.1).

But if anybody should be thanking the teams for playing their hearts out, it's the cast and crew of The Blacklist, whose midseason return pulled an astonishing 13.5 rating, the best performance for an entertainment telecast since the 2012 Oscars. NBC pulled few punches in ad negotiations in 2015 -- the price tag for ads in the game came to a whopping $4.5 million per, with an additional $4.5 million ask for other NBCU sports properties on top of it (though it's not clear in which cases the network was able to make the latter condition stick). Several heavy hitters publicly took their toys and went home, notably Ford and GM. Ultimately, the evening went as well as NBC could possibly have hoped.