Even absent the league’s two biggest draws, viewership for a compelling NFL Wild Card weekend outpaced the league’s regular season growth.
NFL Wild Card Weekend averaged 32.0 million viewers across FOX, CBS, Prime Video, NBCUniversal and ESPN/ABC, up 13% from last year and officially the highest average for the round in a decade. (Keep in mind that changes in Nielsen methodology — including the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to its new “Big Data + Panel” metric — will generally result in favorable comparisons to all prior years, particularly those before Nielsen began tracking out-of-home viewing in its estimates in 2020.)
The increase for the Wild Card round outpaces that of the regular season, which increased 10% year-over-year. That is no small feat given the absence of the league’s two biggest draws, the Chiefs and Cowboys — whose head-to-head meeting on Thanksgiving recorded the largest regular season NFL audience ever measured by Nielsen. This is the first postseason since 1998 that does not feature at least one of the Cowboys, Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady or Peyton Manning.
But with several marquee draws still in the field, most of the games providing compelling finishes, and assistance from the aforementioned Nielsen methodological changes, all six game windows increased from a year ago.
As is usually the case on any week of an NFL season, the late Sunday afternoon window topped the charts. 49ers-Eagles averaged an 18.6 rating and 40.97 million viewers on FOX — up 11% in ratings and 14% in viewership from Packers-Eagles in the same window last year (16.7, 35.89M).
San Francisco’s win, which peaked with 47.76 million in the 7:30 PM ET quarter-hour, recorded the largest audience for a Wild Card game in four years — since 49ers-Cowboys on CBS and Nickelodeon in 2022 (41.50M). (The 2024 Packers-Cowboys Wild Card game, which drew 40.16 million under previous Nielsen methodology, would almost certainly rank higher all things being equal.)
Earlier in the day, Bills-Jaguars drew a 15.7 and 32.71 million on CBS — up a tick in ratings and 5% in viewership from Broncos-Bills last year (15.6, 31.11M). Buffalo’s win, which peaked with 41.15 million, recorded the largest audience in the early Sunday Wild Card window since 2016 (Seahawks-Vikings: 35.36M), though a number intervening games would likely rank higher under current methodology.
On NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” Chargers-Patriots drew a Nielsen-estimated 12.5 and 25.22 million, with the latter figure rising to 28.9 million including streaming viewership measured by Adobe Analytics. The Nielsen-measured figures were down 7 and 4% respectively from Commanders-Buccaneers last year (13.5, 26.20M), but the combined audience including Adobe Analytics was off a fraction of a percent from last year’s 29.0 million.
Including a Spanish-language simulcast on Telemundo, the full across-all-platforms audience of 29.4 million topped last year’s 29.1 million. That is still within the margin that could be explained by methodology — rather than viewer behavior — but officially, the audience was up year-over-year.
In other primetime action, ABC and the ESPN cable networks averaged a combined 29.1 million for Texans-Steelers on Monday night — up 15% from Vikings-Rams last year (25.3M).
Notably, the most-watched of the three primetime games was the one on Amazon Prime Video — Packers-Bears on Saturday night, which as previously noted drew a 12.5 rating and 31.61 million (including local over-the-air simulcasts in the home markets).
Finally, Rams-Panthers opened Wild Card weekend with a 12.8 and 27.98 million (+7%) on FOX, marking the largest recorded audience for the early Saturday Wild Card window since the “Beastquake” Saints-Seahawks game on NBC in 2011 (28.30M). As should go without saying by now, a number of games between then and now would likely rank higher if not for Nielsen’s changes.
