After a double-digit decline in Week 1, NFL viewership bounced back in Week 2 of the season — with the league’s schedule making much of the difference in both weeks.
NFL game windows averaged 20.4 million viewers during Week 2 of the season, up 6% from last year and the highest average for the second week of play in the Nielsen people meter era (dating back to 1988).
Week 2 marked a rebound from the opening week of the season, which declined 13% from last year to an average of 19.5 million. The full season is now averaging 19.9 million, still off from last year’s two-week average of 20.7 million, though the Nielsen-measured streaming audience of 1.6 million is a record.
The two-week average is the third-highest on record, behind last year and 2015, with all the attendant caveats regarding Nielsen methodological changes. (Out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020 or fully accounted for until 2025; this is only in the second year of a new Nielsen methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and first party data with its traditional panel; Nielsen has recently tweaked its measurement to better account for co-viewing of games.)
A key difference in both weeks was the schedule. Week 1 featured competing doubleheaders on FOX and CBS for the first time since 2023, resulting in both networks averaging fewer viewers than the prior year. Week 2 saw a return to the traditional single-network doubleheader and, more importantly, a return to the traditional single-game “Monday Night Football” format after ESPN/ABC carried a doubleheader in Week 2 last season.
“Monday Night Football” averaged 19.4 million viewers for its solo Giants-Rams game this year, topping both of its doubleheader games last season — Buccaneers-Texans at 17.4 million and Chargers-Raiders at just 9.7 million — and the highest for the series in Week 2 of the season since 1999.
“MNF” was just one of multiple Week 2 windows to hit a viewership high. On NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” Colts-Chiefs averaged an 11.9 rating and 24.29 million viewers — marking the largest Week 2 “SNF” audience since 2015. The CBS singleheader had an 8.5 and 19.3 million, making it the most-watched on record in Week 2 of the season. The season debut of “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video had an 8.0 and 18.60 million, marking the most-watched “TNF” opener since 2015.
Those highs helped counter a decline for the Week 2 national window, as FOX averaged a 12.0 and 27.21 million for coverage featuring Commanders-Cowboys — down from last year’s titanic 33.8 million for an Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl rematch. That nonetheless ranks as the most-watched telecast of the season and the second-highest rated, trailing only the Cowboys’ season opener on “Sunday Night Football” in the latter category (12.2).
FOX also averaged a 6.3 and 13.69 million for the first half of its doubleheader, down more than a third from last year’s early doubleheader slot (20.72M).
