Not only did live NFL action dominate television viewership for Sunday, January 14, but even a year-old encore outperformed the rest of the sports line-up.
Sunday’s Packers-Cowboys NFC Wild Card Game averaged a 19.2 rating and 40.34 million viewers on FOX (19.1, 40.16M) and Fox Deportes (0.08, 175K), the largest sports audience of the day and up 18% and 21% respectively from Giants-Vikings a year ago (16.3, 33.21M). As previously noted, the Packers’ upset win delivered the fifth-largest audience on record for a Wild Card game.
Later in the day, Rams-Lions averaged a 15.6 and 36.0 million viewers on NBC (32.15M per Nielsen, plus a streaming audience of 3.9 million measured by Adobe Analytics) — up 13% in ratings and 25% in viewership from Ravens-Bengals last year (13.8, 28.6M). The Lions’ win, which peaked with 38.5 million from 9-9:15 PM ET, trails only Eagles-Bears in 2019 (36.5M) as the most-watched Wild Card game ever on NBC. (Keep in mind that most prior year figures are Nielsen in-home viewership only.)
The Lions’ first playoff win in more than 30 years averaged a 39.6 rating and whopping 69 share in Detroit, with neutral market Kansas City placing second at a 23.8/53. As is typical for a market of its size, Los Angeles failed to crack the top five with a 14.9/42.
There were supposed to be three NFL playoff games on Sunday, but Steelers-Bills was moved to Monday due to inclement weather. In its place, CBS aired a re-air of last year’s Bengals-Chiefs AFC Championship and averaged a 2.7 and 4.59 million — about 25 million fewer than a live Dolphins-Bills game drew in the same window last year, but ahead of all other sporting events Sunday. (By comparison, none of the live sports re-airs that dominated the sports schedule four years ago averaged more than 2.16 million.)
With nothing could compete with the re-air, other sporting events benefited considerably from the postponement. The Real Madrid-Barcelona Spanish Super Cup led the way with a combined 0.7 and 1.42 million across ABC (0.52, 1.06M) and ESPN Deportes (0.15, 353K), marking a 45% increase in viewership over last year’s 978,000 (617K ABC; 361K ESPND).
In men’s college basketball, Georgetown-UConn on FOX (0.52, 876K) soared more than 50 percent over the year-ago Marquette-Xavier game (0.37, 574K), a BTN doubleheader of Maryland-Illinois (0.29, 514K) and Rutgers-Michigan State (0.16, 277K) more-than-doubled last year’s equivalent windows (Ohio State-Rutgers: 213K; Northwesetern-Michigan: 126K), and Memphis-Wichita State on ESPN2 (0.17, 297K) drew more-than nine times the audience of USF-ECU last year (30K).
ESPN’s Virginia Tech-FSU women’s college basketball game (0.33, 557K) nearly doubled Missouri-South Carolina a year ago (0.18, 288K), while its LSU-Auburn lead-out (0.28, 417K) more-than-quadrupled last year’s NC State-North Carolina game (103K). One of the only declines in the early window was on FS1, which averaged 101,000 for rodeo coverage — down from 124,000 for a St. John’s-UConn men’s basketball game last year.
Also in the early window, NBC’s taped coverage of the European Figure Skating Championships had a 0.7 and 1.05 million. There was no comparable programming on NBC last year.
In other Sunday action, final round coverage of golf’s Sony Open averaged a 0.50 and 891,000 on NBC and a 0.23 and 425,000 on Golf Channel, both up from last year (0.44, 720K; 0.20, 365K). Australian Open coverage on ESPN drew a 0.19 and 318,000 (+4%).
Sunday, January 14 sports ratings
