Getty Image / Leandro Bernardes
The NFL regular season is finally here, and America’s favorite sport is back. This is welcome news for not only the tens of millions of football fans, but for network television stations that rely on the huge viewership numbers that the NFL provides to sell advertisements at a time where fewer people are watching television than any before.
As always, the NFL got huge television ratings in Week 1, even higher than they have in recent years. Once again, it’s the NFL carrying all of linear television.
Just how good were the television ratings for Week 1? According to Sports Business Journal, ratings were up 12% across all games other than the Eagles-Packers game on Friday night was only available through Peacock. Even that game put up huge viewership numbers, raking in over 14 million viewers. To put that number in perspective, 14 million viewers is a much higher number than anything the World Series or NBA Finals saw the last time those two events were on the air. And, that’s for a game that, unless you lived in the Philadelphia or Green Bay media market, you had to pay to watch.
Monday Night Football ratings on ESPN for the 49ers-Jets game were actually down from last year, going from 22.6 million from 20.4 million. But, that was still the second-highest number ever for MNF on ESPN, only being beaten out by last year’s Week 1 game that was Aaron Rodgers’ Jets debut against the Bills. But, ESPN is currently in a contract dispute with Directv, meaning around 10 million less people had access to the game. And, I don’t think any executives at Disney are going to complain about that viewership number.
For more context, the top non-NFL show on television in the 2023-2024 television season was the show Tracker on CBS, which averaged roughly 10.8 million viewers. The NFL is blowing that out of the water.
It wasn’t always like that, though. Back in 2000, five television shows, including Survivor, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and Friends were all bigger than the biggest NFL broadcast that year, Monday Night Football. But, regular television programming has declined, while sports have been able to stay steady, and in the NFL’s case often increase viewership.
Overall, expect another huge season in terms of viewership numbers for the NFL.