With Super Bowl LIX, days away, NFL ratings have overall dropped compared to last season. This decline includes the regular season and all three rounds of the postseason leading up to Super Sunday. In the postseason, eight of the twelve games reported a year-over-year decrease in audience, with a year-over-year falloff across all three rounds. In addition, regular season games also reported a decline from the 2023 NFL season. Nonetheless, the audience to NFL games continue to rank at the top of the leaderboard along with strong and continued advertiser support.
Last year’s Super Bowl set a record with an average audience of 123.7 million viewers on CBS, Nickelodeon, Univision and streamed on Paramount+. In fact, the last two Super Bowl records have both set viewing records. There is a chance a Kansas City-Philadelphia Super Bowl rematch could set another audience record. Kansas City is seeking an unprecedented Super Bowl “threepeat” with such household names as Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce (along with Taylor Swift) in tow. Also, Kansas City games have supplanted Dallas Cowboys games in viewership. For Fox, who will be televising the game, the Super Bowl has already set a record, up to ten marketers are reportedly paying up to $8 million to air a :30 ad.
Here is an audience summary of the NFL’s postseason and regular season:
Conference Championships: Next to the Super Bowl the NFC and AFC typically rank as the second and third most viewed programs of the year. That could very well happen again in 2025. Both games were played on Sunday January 26. This year’s early game (kick-off 3 p.m. ET) was the NFC title game on Fox and the AFC title game (kick-off 6:30 p.m. ET) followed on CBS.
Of the two games, the AFC title game delivered a much higher viewership. A close matchup between the two-time defending champion and home team Kansas City Chiefs taking on perennial contender and rival Buffalo Bills. With a close score (Kansas City won 32-29) and a later start time, Nielsen reported the game averaged 57.7 million viewers on CBS/Paramount+. This now ranks as the most watched AFC title game since at least 1988 when Nielsen first implemented People Meters for audience measurement. (CBS has gone without a Nielsen contract since last September and does not have access to their audience data.)
The average audience for the AFC game peaked at over 62 million viewers at 9:30 p.m. (ET). Compared to the audience of last year’s AFC title game (Kansas City vs. Baltimore Ravens), which started earlier in the day, the average audience grew by +4% from 55.5 million. In addition, the game was the most watched conference championship since the NFC title matchup in 2010 (Minnesota-New Orleans) which had averaged 57.9 million. As a reminder, Nielsen began including out-of-home viewing in 2020.
The NFC championship game had the Philadelphia Eagles host division rival Washington Commanders. The Eagles won handily by a score of 55-23. With an earlier start time and a lopsided score, the average audience was only 44.2 million viewers on Fox/Fox Deportes. In contrast, last year’s NFC championship (San Francisco-Detroit) played later in the day averaged 56.3 million viewers. This year’s audience was the least watched NFC title game in five years.
Collectively, the two conference championship games this season averaged 50.8 million viewers, compared to 56 million from last season.
Division Round: The four division round games were played on the weekend of January 18-19. The four games were televised across four different networks; ESPN/ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.
The first game on Saturday afternoon (kick-off 4:30 p.m. ET) between Kansas City and Houston averaged 33.8 million viewers on ESPN/ABC. It became the most watched NFL game on ESPN (regular season or postseason) of all-time dating back to 1987 and a +4% increase from last year’s contest in the same time period. The audience peaked at 39.5 million viewers at 7 p.m. (ET). Kansas City won the game 23-14,.
Later in the day, Washington in an upset, defeated top seeded Detroit 45-31. With kick-off at 8 p.m. (ET), the playoff game on Fox and the Fox Sports app, averaged 33.6 million viewers. The audience was down by -10% from last year’s Saturday night game which had averaged 37.5 million viewers. The audience peaked at 37.5 million viewers at 9:30 p.m. (ET).
On Sunday home team Philadelphia defeated the L.A. Rams 28-22. With kick-off at 3 p.m. (ET), on NBC/Peacock, the game averaged 37.8 million viewers. By comparison, last year’s game airing in a similar time period averaged 40.4 viewers. Nonetheless, Nielsen reports, the audience delivery on NBC was the fourth highest for a divisional playoff game in the network’s history. Viewing peaked toward the end of the game (6:00 p.m. ET) at 47.5 million viewers.
The fourth and final game of the weekend aired on CBS/Paramount+ with kick-off at 6:30 p.m. (ET). The game was a marquee matchup with Buffalo hosting Baltimore. With Buffalo squeaking out a 27-25 victory, the game was the most watched of the weekend averaging 42.2 million viewers. Nonetheless, it was a sharp drop-off (-16%), from last year’s Sunday night game which averaged over 50 million viewers (Kansas City-Buffalo).
In total, this year four divisional round games averaged 37.1 million viewers. The viewing was lowest in the divisional round in four years, as well as drop-off of-7% from last year’s average of 40 million viewers.
Wild Card Weekend: There were six games played during the opening round of the NFL postseason, two on Saturday, (January 11), three of Sunday (January 12) and the last game on Monday night (January 13).
On Saturday at 4:30 p.m. the NFL postseason began when the host team Houston hosted the L.A. Chargers. The game aired on CBS/Nickelodeon/Paramount+ and averaged 31.1 million viewers, a +7% increase from last year’s game (Cleveland-Houston) in the same time slot. Houston won the game 32-12.
Later in the day was a primetime game featuring divisional rivals Baltimore hosting Pittsburgh. The matchup was streamed on Prime Video. With the kick-off at 8 p.m. (ET), Baltimore won 28-14. The game generated an average audience of 22.1 million viewers, a -3% drop-off from the 23 million Peacock (Miami-Kansas City) averaged on Saturday night last year. Nonetheless, the NFL game was the most watched in Amazon’s three seasons of live streaming NFL games.
The first of Sunday’s tripleheader had Buffalo hosting and routing Denver by a score of 31-7. The playoff game aired on CBS/Paramount+ with kick-off at 1 p.m. (ET). The game averaged 31.1 million viewers, an audience comparable to last year’s Pittsburgh-Buffalo game (which was moved to Monday due to inclement weather.)
The late afternoon had Green Bay travel to Philadelphia. The game started at 4:30 p.m. (ET) and aired on Fox. The game won by Philadelphia 22-10 averaged 35.6 million, the highest of any wild card game in 2025. Nevertheless, the game was -11% below last year’s game (Green Bay-Dallas) in the same time period.
The Sunday night game on NBC/Peacock between Washington visiting Tampa kicked-off was 8 p.m. (ET). Washington squeaked out a win by the score of 23-20. Of the six games that weekend, it was the only one decided by one score. Despite the close score, the game averaged 29 million viewers, a -19% decline from last year’s Sunday night game (L.A. Rams-Detroit).
The sixth and final game on Monday night started at 8 p.m. (ET) on ABC/ESPN. With wildfires raging in Los Angeles, Minnesota had traveled to Phoenix to face the host team L.A. Rams. The game averaged 25.4 million viewers, a -13% decline from last year’s Monday night game. The Rams won by a score of 27-9.
In total, the six wild cards averaged 28.3 million viewers, a -9.3% fall-off from last year’s early round games.
Regular Season: According to Sportico, the audience for the NFL 2024 regular season averaged 17.5 million viewers across 118 TV windows, a -2.2% decline from 2023. With a contentious Presidential election, the audience drop-off could have been steeper.
One of the big winners this season was Prime Video. The streaming provider’s third season of NFL Thursday Night Football averaged 13.2 million viewers, a year-over-year increase of +11% (11.9 million). When Black Friday’s games included the increase was +13%.
Disney reported the largest fall-off in NFL viewers. In 2024, Monday Night Football averaged 15.0 million viewers, a drop-off -14% from 2023 (17.6 million).
In 2024, Sunday Night Football on BBC/Peacock averaged a Total Audience Delivery (TAD) audience of 21.6 million viewers (including Peacock.) its highest audience since 2015 and +1$% from 2023. NBC’s Sunday Night Football is poised to become the top-rated prime time show for an unprecedented 14 consecutive seasons. (When only NBC is counted the average audience was 19.4 million, a year-over-decline of -2%.)
Fox averaged 18.4 million for all of its regular season games, a -3% decline from 2023 (19.0 million). The Fox branded “America’s Game of the Week” airing on late Sunday afternoon, averaged 23.9 million viewers, also a -3% decline.
In 2024 NFL games on CBS/Paramount+ averaged 19.18 million viewers, a slight fall-off from 2023 audience delivery of 19.345 million. The CBS late afternoon games, benefiting from a number of Kansas City Chiefs games, averaged 24.2 million viewers, surpassing the of “America’s Game of the Week” on Fox. Previously, for Sunday late afternoon games, Fox had been top rated for the top-rated for the past 13 years. Once again, late Sunday afternoon games average a higher audience than any regular season primetime games.
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