For the first time ever, an NFL playoff game airs exclusively via a streaming service. How big a hit will the NFL take in the ratings for the Dolphins-Chiefs Wild Card game on Peacock?
How to watch the Dolphins-Chiefs NFL playoff game on Peacock
Date: Saturday, January 13
Kickoff Time: 8:15 PM Eastern Time (ET)
Where to Watch: Peacock (nationally), KSHB-NBC (Kansas City), WTVJ-NBC (Miami-Ft. Lauderdale). (If you subscribe to Peacock via the preceding link, this site may receive a commission.)
Will Peacock’s playoff game be the least-watched ever?
No sports league is as committed to free, over-the-air broadcast television as the NFL. Entering Saturday, only one playoff game in league history had ever aired outside of the “Big Four” broadcast networks, a Cardinals-Panthers Wild Card game on ESPN in 2015. Compare that to the other “Big Four” sports leagues, whose playoff games primarily air on basic cable.
Yet on Saturday, the NFL will cross a Rubicon the other leagues have yet to approach, placing a Wild Card playoff game not on basic cable, but exclusively on a streaming service. As first announced last year, Peacock has exclusive rights to a Wild Card game on Saturday, marking the first time a streaming service has exclusively carried a “Big Four” playoff game and just the second time any NFL playoff game has aired outside of broadcast television.
That news was shocking enough when it was announced, but last week came the added surprise that the game in question will be one of the highest-profile of the weekend: the defending champion Chiefs hosting former teammate Tyreek Hill and the Dolphins. The decision to not just put a playoff game on Peacock, but to put a high-profile game on that platform, represents a complete reversal of the television strategy that has given the NFL its exalted status among television properties. Other leagues have made money sacrificing ratings for revenue and have steadily eroded their audience in the process. The NFL is not risking such an outcome yet — this is, after all, just one game — but the more such compromises are made, the less there will eventually be to compromise.
Saturday marks just the second exclusive NFL game on Peacock. Last month, Bills-Chargers averaged a 3.0 rating and 7.33 million viewers, the sixth-smallest audience of the season — ahead of only three early morning International Series games on NFL Network and two Monday Night Football games on ESPN that overlapped with competing games on ABC. More than a million of those viewers watched the game on local over-the-air simulcasts in the home markets, meaning that the Peacock audience was about six million. While that is a respectable number for a streaming service with just 28 million subscribers (entering the game), there is little doubt the NFL left a more than a few million viewers on the table.
The bar for respectability will be considerably higher for Saturday’s game. Last year’s least-watched playoff game, Chargers-Jaguars in the same Saturday night Wild Card window, averaged 20.61 million viewers on NBC. No playoff game has failed to crack the 20 million mark in 17 years, since a Chiefs-Colts Wild Card game averaged 19.70 million on NBC. Since the current NFL playoff scheduling format began in the 2002-03 season, the least-watched playoff game overall was Jets 41, Colts 0 on Wild Card weekend in 2003 with 19.66 million.
To jump from seven to 20 million viewers is not as simple as it would ordinarily be for a playoff game, as it will require a considerable number of potential viewers to find and sign up for Peacock. Given that fans in the home markets will have access to the game on NBC, those with the greatest level of interest in the game will not have to subscribe. While a great many neutral observers across the nation will surely sign up, the reality is that the NFL’s massive audiences include a fair share of those whose interest in the games is lukewarm. Those casual fans might find something better to do with their Saturday night.
Peel off just a million viewers off of last year’s total and Dolphins-Chiefs becomes the least-watched NFL playoff game in at least two decades (and likely ever). It seems unlikely that the Peacock exclusive will end up ‘only’ a million viewers short. Instead, expect Saturday’s game to end up the least-watched playoff game by a comfortable margin. The audience will still be massive compared to other sports, but by the exalted standards of the NFL, it should be a figure so noticeably low as to induce at least some chatter inside the league. There is unlikely to be any regret within NFL headquarters about getting an extra $110 million in rights fees, even at the cost of a record-low playoff audience, but there might be some hesitation about doing this again.
Then again, it is worth noting that there is no direct financial benefit for the league in generating the largest possible audience. Once the rights are sold, the leagues are set. It is the networks who need to care about how many people are watching any given game, and even they do not need to live and die with every Nielsen release — ad sales have been known to rise even when ratings are down. If a network is willing to pay a large sum in rights fees and the result is a record-low audience, the sensible business play is still to take the money.
The NFL is in a position where it can occasionally trade ratings for revenue without jeopardizing its overarching strategy of making games available to the broadest (and largest) possible audience. The question is how far it can go before that is no longer the case. Few would have imagined even a year ago that viewers would have to download Peacock to watch Patrick Mahomes play a playoff game. That may be a prelude to even more substantial changes down the road.
Ratings prediction
No NFL playoff game has averaged fewer than 20 million viewers since 2007 and no game has fallen below the 19 million mark since the current playoff scheduling format began in the 2002-03 season.
AFC Wild Card: Dolphins-Chiefs (8:15p Sat Peacock). Prediction: 17.42M viewers (including over-the-air simulcasts in Miami and Kansas City).
