NFL Breaks Viewership Record In Week 1

 

Marcus Williams of the Baltimore Ravens pursues Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs during on Sept. 5, 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri.

The first week of NFL broadcasts—which included a re-match of the AFC championship game, an appearance by Taylor Swift and Tom Brady’s debut as an on-air analyst—broke records for the season’s opening week with an average viewership of 21 million people per game.

Key Facts

The viewership for the first week represents a 12% increase over the per-game average in Week 1 last year, according to Nielsen, and 123 million people saw at least part of one game, the league’s highest total for an opening week since 2019.

The year's opening game, a re-match of last season's AFC Championship between the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens (which included the buzzed-about Swift appearance) was the most-watched game with an average of 29.2 million viewers on NBC and Peacock.

The Philadelphia Eagles v. Green Bay Packers game, which was broadcast from Brazil and was the first Friday night Week 1 game for the NFL in 54 years, averaged 14 million viewers and was the second most-watched live event ever for Peacock, NBC's streaming service.

The Dallas Cowboys/Cleveland Browns game, and the debut of Brady as an analyst for Fox, averaged 23.93 million and was the most-watched Week 1 telecast for the broadcaster since 2020, the network told Forbes.

CBS averaged 17.79 million viewers and Fox averaged 18.64 million for the six games showed on each network, respectively.

The first "Monday Night Football" game of the year was watched less than last year’s Monday night opener (when Aaron Rodgers tore his ACL in the game’s first minutes) and averaged 20.4 million San Francisco 49ers v. New York Jets game (most DirecTV customers were unable to watch the Jets/49es game because of a carriage dispute with Disney).

Key Background

NFL games have long remained the lone exception to the general decline in linear TV viewership. League football games were by far the most-watched broadcasts of the year last year, accounting for 93 of the 100 highest rated shows of all of 2023, up from 82 of the top 100 in 2022 and 75 in 2021. Viewership for last season's playoff games was also up nearly 10% from the year before.

What To Watch For

This election season could impact ratings for the NFL, as it has in past election cycles. This summer, political events dominated the most-watched telecasts with the Biden-Trump debate scoring 75% more viewers in June (51.3 million) than the Chiefs/Ravens game (29.2 million). The league opening game was on par for viewers with Kamala Harris’ Aug. 22 nomination acceptance speech on the final night of the Democratic National Convention and Biden's July 24 Oval Office address announcing the end of his reelection campaign, both of which were watched by 28.9 million viewers.