Sunday Night Football scored a larger-than-usual audience in Week 4 of the season.
The latest edition of NFL Sunday Night Football on NBC (Chiefs-Jets) averaged a 12.9 rating and 26.7 million viewers (24.83M per Nielsen, plus a streaming audience of 1.85 million per Adobe Analytics), marking the second-largest audience of the NFL season.*
The defending champion Chiefs have now been featured in three of the four most-watched windows this NFL season and the Jets in three of the top five.
Kansas City’s win, which peaked with 29.4 million viewers in the fast-nationals, increased 15% in ratings and 20% in viewership from Chiefs-Buccaneers last year — a matchup that pit Patrick Mahomes against Tom Brady (11.2, 22.2M). The Nielsen-only audience increased 19%, but the Adobe Analytics-measured streaming audience jumped 42%.
The female audience for Chiefs-Jets was 29% higher than the Sunday night average in the first three weeks of the season, compared to a 16% increase among male viewers. In terms of raw numbers, 2.1 million additional female viewers were watching compared to the first three weeks.
Kansas City led all markets Sunday night with a 47.8 rating and whopping 83 share, meaning that 83% of homes with televisions in use were tuned to the game in the average minute. St. Louis ranked a distant second with an 18.7/45, followed by Denver (16.3/46), Minneapolis-St. Paul (16.2/42) and Las Vegas (15.6/45). New York tied for ninth with a 14.7 and 38.
The 83 share in Kansas City and 38 share in New York are the markets’ highest ever for the respective teams on Sunday Night Football.
* On a Nielsen-only basis, Chiefs-Jets (24.83M) trails only the Week 2 national window (mostly Jets-Cowboys: 25.78M) as the most-watched of the season. Including the streaming audience measured by Adobe Analytics, Chiefs-Jets (26.7M) trails only the Lions-Chiefs Kickoff Game (27.5M).
(Nielsen estimates from NBC Sports)
