NFL regular season viewership is back trending at what officially counts as a record pace.
NFL game windows were averaging 18.45 million viewers through Week 8, up 3% from the same point last year (17.8M) and the highest average at this point of the season in the Nielsen people meter era (1988-present). The previous high was 18.43 million in 2010. (The average during the 2015 season — often the benchmark for NFL viewership milestones — was 18.35 million.)
Viewership had previously been trending at a people meter era high through Week 5, before dipping back below the 2010 and 2015 seasons the following weeks.
(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 8 slate averaged 18.6 million viewers, actually down a fraction of a percent from last year (-0.2%), but still the second-highest average since 1990 (19.1M). The slight decline helped pull season-to-date increase down a tick from 4% the prior week. That is still a considerable improvement over the 13% decline the season opened with in Week 1.
As has been the case for much of the season, three packages are trending at decade-plus highs — the CBS Sunday afternoon slate, “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video and “Monday Night Football” on ESPN/ABC.
CBS is averaging 19.56 million viewers through Week 8, up 5% from last year and the highest for the network in the people meter era — including the tail end of its run as the league’s NFC broadcast partner in the early 1990s.
The network averaged a 13.1 rating and 28.18 million viewers for last week’s national window, featuring Chiefs-Broncos in 93% of markets — up 12% and 11% respectively from last year (mostly Cowboys-Broncos: 11.7, 25.33M) and the second-largest audience of the NFL season, behind another CBS national window in Week 4 that also featured Kansas City (mostly Chiefs-Raiders: 28.45M).
CBS owns three of the top five audiences, with the Week 6 national window (mostly Bills-Raiders) rounding out the top five at 26.37 million. The CBS late window is now averaging 25.31 million viewers, making it the most-watched window in the NFL. Fueled in large part by the rise of the Chiefs, this season would be the fourth-straight in which the AFC-heavy CBS package topped “America’s Game of the Week” on FOX, after losing the head-to-head in 15-straight years from 2008-22.
In addition to the viewership marks, last week’s telecast was also the highest rated of the NFL season — surpassing the previous high of 12.5 for the previously mentioned Week 4 window.
Overall, CBS had its most-watched Week 8 doubleheader yet, with an average of 21.52 million across the two windows (+17%). Its early doubleheader slate, featuring Ravens-Bills in 74% of markets, had a 7.1 and 15.0 million — up a third in viewership from last year.
The “Monday Night Football” package is averaging 18.6 million viewers this season, the highest for the series since ESPN acquired the rights, and its highest eight-week average overall since 1999 (19.3M).
This past week’s Bears-Seahawks game averaged 16.4 million on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and NFL+, a figure that includes local over-the-air simulcasts in the home markets — down from Commanders-Chiefs last year, which was simulcast on ABC but also faced the World Series (17.6M).
“Thursday Night Football” is averaging 17.56 million viewers on Prime Video, up 13% from last year and the highest since the package moved to Prime Video in 2022. This year’s average also ties 2015 — when the rights were held by CBS and NFL Network — as the highest on record for the package through eight weeks.
The Week 8 edition, Panthers-Packers, averaged a 7.4 and 16.56 million — up 26% from Vikings-Chargers last year (13.13M) and the largest Week 8 “TNF” audience since Packers-Cardinals on FOX and NFL Network in 2021 (20.26M).
The most-watched primetime package remains NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” which was averaging 22.6 million through Week 8 — actually down from a year ago (24.7M), but behind only last year and 2015 (23.6M) as the highest average through eight weeks since NBC began airing the series in 2006.
Last weekend’s Eagles-Commanders game averaged a 9.3 and 19.0 million, down sharply from Packers-Steelers last year, which marked Aaron Rodgers’ first game against his former team (25.5M per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics)
Rounding out the Week 8 slate, FOX averaged a 7.6 and 16.46 million for its singleheader window — down from an 8.8 and 18.95 million last year. An eight-week average for the network was not immediately available.
