The early trend in NFL viewing has been strong audiences that are nonetheless down from a year ago.
Through the first three weeks, NFL game windows were averaging 20.0 million viewers across the league’s various media partners — down slightly from 20.5 million last year, but otherwise the highest average at this point of a season in the Nielsen people-meter era (dates back to 1988).
Week 3 of the season averaged 20.2 million, down from last year, but as with the overall average still the second-most watched on record. (Note that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020 or fully accounted for until 2025, that 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, and that Nielsen has recently tweaked its measurement to better account for co-viewing of games.)
The Week 3 slate concluded with an audience of 22.6 million for the Eagles-Bears “Monday Night Football” game on the ESPN family of networks, down from Lions-Ravens last year (22.8M), but otherwise the most-watched Week 3 edition of “MNF” since 1997 (Eagles-Cowboys: 23.42M). Across all weeks, the Bears’ upset win ranks as the sixth-most watched edition of “MNF” since the series moved to ESPN in 2006.
That trend also held for several other Week 3 windows. As previously reported, CBS averaged an 11.0 and 24.90 million for its national window (Ravens-Cowboys in most markets) — the network’s largest Week 3 audience since 2014 and the league’s most-watched International Series game on record, but still down from last year’s equivalent window on FOX.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football (Rams-Broncos) had a 9.9 and 20.77 million, down from last year, when the series featured the Chiefs.
With the three most-watched windows each down from a year ago, even gains for “Thursday Night Football” (Falcons-Packers: 7.6, 16.8M) and the FOX singleheader (7.9, 17.90M) could not make up the shortfall.
