The Chiefs-Bills rivalry delivered the largest NFL audience on record outside of the Super Bowl and conference title games, while Caitlin Clark and Iowa helped women’s college basketball to a viewership mark of its own.
As previously noted, the Chiefs-Bills AFC Divisional Round game averaged a 24.2 rating and 50.39 million viewers on CBS, making it the most-watched NFL game on record outside of the Super Bowl and conference championships. (Keep in mind out-of-home viewing was not tracked in Nielsen final nationals until 2020.)
The Chiefs’ narrow win was also the highest rated NFL game — outside of the Super Bowl and conference title games — since 2017.
Earlier in the day, NBC averaged an 18.6 and 37.11 million for Buccaneers-Lions (40.5 million including additional streaming data tracked by Adobe Analytics). The Nielsen-measured audience was only the largest for an NFL game on NBC (excluding the Super Bowl) since Rams-Buccaneers in the Divisional Round two years ago (38.14M), but the combined Nielsen-Adobe Analytics figure was the network’s highest since 1994.
The Lions’ win was preceded by an Iowa-Ohio State women’s college basketball game that averaged a 1.1 and 1.86 million, the largest audience in 14 years for a regular season women’s game on any network (2010 Stanford-UConn: 2.1M). Ohio State’s overtime win lasted 18 minutes into the timeslot reserved for NBC’s Football Night in America and averaged 3.9 million viewers during that period.
Iowa-Ohio State cruised past the competing Michigan State-Maryland men’s game on CBS, which averaged a 0.7 and 1.23 million, to say nothing of Rutgers-Illinois on BTN (0.13, 212K) or Memphis-Tulane on ESPN2 (0.13, 206K). In other women’s action, Arkansas-LSU had a mere 0.11 and 187,000 on ESPN and Clemson-Virginia Tech just a 0.07 and 98,000 on The CW.
In other action, a Liverpool-Bournemouth English Premier League match averaged a 0.51 and 894,000 across USA Network (0.36, 632K) and Telemundo (0.15, 262K). The final round of the PGA Tour American Express averaged a 0.30 and 534,000 on Golf Channel, preceded by the LPGA Tour Tournament of Champions at a 0.16 and 257,000. Primetime Australian Open coverage drew a 0.19 and 302,000 on ESPN2, preceded by an ESPN window at a 0.18 and 270,000.
Sunday, January 21 sports ratings
