As the NFL glides into spooky season like the ghost of the Bengals’ playoff hopes, the league’s TV audience thus far has shown little sign of surrendering to the sickly allure of the presidential election cycle. Through the first five weeks of the 2024-25 campaign, the NFL’s regional and national TV windows are up slightly versus the year-ago period, as the rights holders continue to enjoy the perks of being in business with what remains of the American monoculture.
According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the NFL is averaging 17.22 million linear TV and Amazon Prime viewers, which marks an uptick of 1% versus the year-ago period, good for a lift of some 102,000 impressions per week. (Not too shabby, given that TV usage is down 8% compared to the year-ago period.) Toss the networks’ various streaming sidecars into the mix and the total average turnout is north of 17.5 million, marking the NFL’s highest turnout in nine years.
While the cable news screaming heads have significantly boosted their Sunday ratings since the season kicked off a month ago, the lift in deliveries at Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, et al hasn’t put a dent in the NFL’s numbers. This is a welcome development for the media platforms that are shelling out $10 billion this fall for the right to carry the games, especially in light of the corrosive effect the Trump-Clinton race had on the 2016 season. (At this point eight years ago, in-game viewership was down 11% as casual fans increasingly set football aside in order to spend more time wallowing in pre-election doomerism.)
If it’s still a bit early to entirely write off an October ratings surprise, that’s not to say that just about everything on the tube won’t lose share if things get particularly hairy on Election Day and beyond. We are in the midst of one of the most deranged and unpredictable news cycles in memory, and polling in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina suggests that a clear-cut winner may not be determined on the night of Nov. 5. As much as nobody in their right mind is eager to prolong the process of selecting a new leader, electoral politics may overstay its welcome; if that’s the case, the NFL’s hegemonic stranglehold over our collective imagination may have to temporarily take a back seat to a whole lot of Beltway intrigue.
In the here and now, however, the NFL doesn’t have a care in the world. Despite a relatively rough showing in Week 5, when deliveries for the two national Sunday windows plummeted 20%—CBS’ 4:20 p.m. broadcast, featuring the Packers and Rams with 87% coverage, fell 12% versus last year’s analogous Chiefs-Vikings showdown, while an 85-minute weather delay robbed NBC of about a quarter of its usual primetime tally—the major TV packages are still riding high.
The Sunday afternoon coast-to-coast slot shared by CBS and Fox is currently averaging a hearty 24.71 million viewers per week, good for a lift of 1.11 million bonus impressions per week, while NBC’s nighttime showcase is drawing 23.31 million each week across the flagship network and Peacock. While that’s down a hair from the year-ago average (23.69 million), the dip is entirely a function of the long-deferred Cowboys-Steelers game. More to the point, Sunday Night Football continues to run roughshod over the rest of the primetime landscape, as NBC’s linear TV deliveries (20.58 million) are more than six-and-a-half times larger than the average 8-11 p.m. show (3.09 million). Predictably enough, NBC is also killing it in the dollar demo, as SNF is now drawing 7.31 million adults 18-49 per week, a figure that makes mincemeat out of the broadcast entertainment average (510,188).
Also on the upswing is Amazon’s Thursday Night Football, which through four games is averaging 14.17 million viewers, up 5% from last year’s 13.54 million. The streaming package remains a hit with younger fans, serving up an audience with a median age of 47.5 years, or 7.2 years south of the NFL’s TV average (54.7), and a whopping 16.6 years junior to the broadcast primetime average (64.1).
Of course, a long day of NFL action starts with the 1 p.m. ET regional windows, and the CBS/Fox numbers have set the tone for the rest of the TV slate. The 8-10 early games are currently grinding out 15.59 million viewers each week, which amounts to an 8% improvement over the first five weeks of 2023.
If any NFL media partner can be said to be lagging last season’s deliveries, it’s Disney, as Monday Night Football is averaging 13.07 million viewers, down 10% from the year-ago 14.53 million. Much of that downturn can be chalked up to tough year-to-year comps; last fall, ABC picked up a big chunk of NFL simulcasts as a hedge against a writers’ strike that had deprived the broadcaster of much of its scripted fall series.
MNF’s amplification via the big-reach network resulted in a 30% increase in deliveries across the full 2023 slate, but that was essentially a one-shot deal. ABC enjoys a reach advantage of some 14.5 million TV households over its basic-cable sibling ESPN, and at this time a year ago, the broadcaster had already aired five NFL games, including two exclusives. That frequency has been pared down to three ABC broadcasts so far in 2024.
On a team-by-team basis, the 5-0 Kansas City Chiefs have emerged as the biggest draw of the young season, as Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the rest of the defending Super Bowl champs have appeared in four of the top six most-watched broadcasts. KC’s Week 2 win over the Bengals in CBS’ national window averaged a season-high TV audience of 27.87 million viewers, edging the Ravens-Cowboys nailbiter on Fox just seven days later (27.29 million). The Chiefs also nabbed the No. 3 slot with a victory over Baltimore in NBC’s NFL Kickoff broadcast, which, excluding streaming impressions, averaged 24.56 million viewers. Throw in those Peacock deliveries, and Comcast’s media unit can lay claim to the season’s biggest single football audience, as TV and streaming combined for a grand total of 29.16 million fans.
Last season, the Chiefs were the NFL’s fourth-best draw, with an average turnout of 23.33 million across 11 national TV windows. As usual, the Dallas Cowboys lorded it up over the rest of the league, scaring up 24.93 million viewers per week in the course of 13 national appearances. Along with the previously mentioned Ravens broadcast, Dallas has dibs on the No. 5 slot, drawing 23.93 million viewers with its Week 1 blowout of the Browns on Fox.
As much as KC’s kings of the commercial break might like to unseat the Cowboys from their media throne, Dallas would seem to be favored by the schedule. Sunday’s game against the Lions is sure to do a big number on Fox, and a Thanksgiving clash with its NFC East rivals from New York all but guarantees a crowd of 40 million or better. A crucial Dec. 29 date with Philly is another game that promises to draw heat, and that’s not counting the four primetime outings that Dallas has yet to check off its to-do list for 2024.
The Chiefs, meanwhile, have another seven national obligations left on their dance card, including a Nov. 17 scuffle with the Buffalo Bills on CBS. Provided we’re not in the midst of some sort of half-assed Civil War II: Electric Boogaloo, another Mahomes aerial war with Josh Allen should be a surefire cure for the post-election blues.
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