The Chiefs-Bills rivalry delivered one of the top regular season NFL audiences in recent memory.
Sunday’s Chiefs-Bills NFL national window averaged a 15.1 rating and more than 31 million viewers on CBS, trailing only Cowboys-Dolphins on Christmas Eve last year (31.52M) as the most-watched national window since 2007 — when CBS drew 33.8 million for Peyton Manning and the Colts against Tom Brady and the undefeated Patriots. (As with any viewership milestones of this sort, keep in mind that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020.)
The Bills’ win delivered the fourth-largest audience on record for the NFL national window and one of the ten-largest regular season audiences overall outside of Thanksgiving (records date back to 1988).
As might go without saying, ratings and viewership were the highest of the NFL season. CBS, which due to a conflict with Nielsen is not disclosing viewership for any of its programs, now owns four of the season’s top six Nielsen-measured audiences.
This year’s game comfortably outdrew last season’s regular season meeting of the rivals, which headlined the Week 14 national window in 90% of markets (13.4, 26M).
Earlier in the day, CBS averaged 19.8 million for the first half of its doubleheader — its most-watched early doubleheader window since 1992.
Both CBS windows outperformed the primetime telecasts, with NBC’s Sunday Night Football at an 8.0 and 15.31 million for Bengals-Chargers and ESPN’s Monday Night Football clocking in around 17 million for Texans-Cowboys (an exact figure for MNF will be provided when available). Both windows declined from last year, when SNF drew 18.45 million for Vikings-Broncos and MNF had a milestone audience of its own with 29.03 million for Eagles-Chiefs.
