Long the lesser conference in the NFL, the AFC continues to reach new ratings heights on the backs of star quarterbacks and new rivalries.
Sunday’s Bills-Chiefs AFC Championship Game averaged 57.7 million viewers on CBS, marking the largest audience on record for an AFC title game (dating back to 1988) and the most-watched conference championship overall since Vikings-Saints on FOX in 2010 (57.9M). Going back further, the only other conference title game with a larger recorded audience was Cowboys-49ers in 1982, which was said to have averaged 68.7 million in an era before Nielsen people meters.
(Keep in mind Nielsen did not track out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, meaning games like Cowboys-49ers in 1995 — which averaged nearly 57 million on a strictly in-home basis — would almost certainly rank higher all things being equal.)
The Chiefs’ win, which peaked with more than 62 million viewers from 9:30 PM ET through the conclusion, increased 4% from last year’s Chiefs-Ravens AFC title game, which aired in the early window (55.5M). Viewership also increased 2% from Lions-49ers on FOX in the same late window last year (56.3M).
As one would expect, this year’s game was the most-watched meeting of the teams in their current iterations. The only other time the Patrick Mahomes-era Chiefs and Josh Allen-era Bills met in the AFC title game was in the COVID-affected 2020-21 season, when the matchup averaged 42.3 million. All other playoff meetings took place in the Divisional Round, which generally does not attract the kind of audiences typical of a conference championship.
The AFC title game averaged 13.5 million more viewers than its NFC counterpart (44.2M), or 31% — the biggest gap between title games on both a raw and percentage basis since 1996. That year, Packers-Cowboys on FOX outdrew Colts-Steelers on NBC by nearly 15 million viewers and nearly 40 percent.
That gap is broadly indicative of the changing fortunes of the AFC and NFC, the latter of which has long been the most attractive conference. AFC-affiliated CBS averaged more viewers than NFC-affiliated FOX for a second-straight regular season, a feat that prior to last year had not been accomplished since 2007.
