Ratings predictions for the NFL’s “Super” Wild Card weekend and the NBA’s Martin Luther King Day slate.
The NFL enters the postseason with its usual momentum. Regular season viewership actually declined from last season (from 17.1 to 16.7 million viewers per window), but that is primarily due to the expected ratings shortfall Thursday Night Football suffered in its move from linear TV to Amazon Prime. Viewership was up on CBS, FOX and NBC and likely would have been up on ESPN had the network not lost its marquee Bills-Bengals game in Week 17 due to the collapse of Damar Hamlin. Will the good times continue into the postseason?
How many viewers for Brady vs. the Cowboys?
The first-ever playoff meeting of Tom Brady and the Dallas Cowboys figures to be a ratings bonanza. The Cowboys remain the NFL’s biggest television draw, having played in five of the six most-watched windows during the regular season. Brady remains the league’s most-recognizable star, even on a sub-.500 team that made the playoffs only by winning the league’s most dreadful division. In the traditional late Sunday afternoon window, this kind of matchup would have easily surpassed the 40 million mark and perhaps even approached 50 million. Monday night will likely be a different story.
That such a big game is airing on Monday Night Football is no coincidence. ESPN under Jimmy Pitaro has spent years smoothing things over with NFL executives after the relationship between the companies grew strained in the John Skipper era. It has raised the level of its production by bringing in Joe Buck and Troy Aikman from Fox. It has continued to share its biggest games with broadcast network ABC, helping MNF shed the perception of being a ‘cable’ package. Yet even with all of those moves, it may be the case that the biggest factor in MNF getting Cowboys-Buccaneers was the cancellation of Bills-Bengals two weeks ago — a game that was the jewel of ESPN’s regular season schedule. It hardly seems coincidental that two weeks after losing its biggest regular season game in years, ESPN/ABC is getting its biggest playoff game since ABC’s last Super Bowl in 2006.
There is certainly no strategic reason for putting Cowboys-Buccaneers on MNF. The game simply will not draw the kind of viewership it would have garnered in the late Sunday afternoon window, or even on NBC’s Sunday Night Football. The difference between Sunday and Monday night could well be in the neighborhood of 10 million viewers. Nonetheless, the matchup is so strong that — barring a blowout — it should deliver a massive audience. Will it do well enough to top Wild Card weekend?
In the same Wild Card Monday window last season, Cardinals-Rams averaged 23.2 million viewers.
NFC Wild Card: Cowboys-Buccaneers (8:15p Mon ESPN/ABC/ESPN2). Prediction: 33.7M viewers.
Predictions for the rest of the weekend
FOX would no doubt have liked to get Cowboys-Buccaneers, especially after missing out on Dallas’ highly-viewed Wild Card game against San Francisco last season. Even so, the network is likely just glad to get a game in the late Sunday window — typically the highest rated of any NFL weekend — for the first time in five years. Giants-Vikings is not the most attractive matchup on paper, but it at least features the New York market. Viewership will fall well short of last year’s 41.5 million for 49ers-Cowboys, but expect a strong audience nonetheless.
NFC Wild Card: Giants-Vikings (4:40p Sun FOX). Prediction: 32.6M.
One of the most intriguing matchups of Wild Card weekend pits the surging Jaguars against the Chargers in a matchup of star young quarterbacks Trevor Lawrence and Justin Herbert. Viewership should fall short of last year’s higher-profile Patriots-Bills game (26.4M) but remain respectable.
AFC Wild Card: Chargers-Jaguars (8:15p Sat NBC). Prediction: 25.0M.
The absence of starting quarterbacks Lamar Jackson and Tua Tagovialova figures to take some of the shine off of the other two AFC Wild Card games. With the Bills, Bengals and idle Chiefs the clear class of the AFC, it seems somewhat unlikely that the shorthanded Ravens and Dolphins can shake things up Sunday. The comparable windows last season averaged 30.4 (Eagles-Buccaneers) and 28.9 (Steelers-Chiefs) million viewers.
AFC Wild Card: Dolphins-Bills (1p Sun CBS). Prediction: 26.6M.
AFC Wild Card: Ravens-Bengals (8:15p Sun NBC). Prediction: 23.9M.
Wild Card weekend begins Saturday with an NFC West matchup of the Seahawks and 49ers. The networks were surely rooting for the Packers to win and set up a marquee rivalry game in round one, but the Lions had other plans. Do not expect a particularly notable figure for this one.
NFC Wild Card: Seahawks-49ers (4:30p Sat FOX). Prediction: 22.1M.
Can the NBA stay afloat on a football-packed weekend?
For the first time since the early 2000s, ABC carries an NBA matinee on NFL Wild Card Saturday. ABC used the NBA as a lead-in for its Wild Card doubleheaders from 2003-06, an arrangement that ended when the network lost NFL rights. While ABC has the NFL once more, its annual Wild Card game (simulcast with ESPN) airs on Monday night — meaning Saturday’s NBA game leads into local programming and overlaps with NFL pregame coverage on FOX. Add to that an underwhelming matchup and it seems highly likely that all-time broadcast network lows are in the cards.
(The current record-lows for an NBA game on broadcast are a 0.8 and 1.16 million for a mid-August Spurs-Pelicans game in the “bubble” three years ago.)
If ESPN/ABC must air an NBA game on Wild Card weekend, far better to do so on Martin Luther King Day — when the games can at least serve as an appetizer for the networks’ NFL coverage. Much as on Christmas Day, adding ABC games on MLK Day could help the NBA mitigate the NFL competition. Last year’s MLK Day games on TNT generated two of the network’s smallest audiences all season (Bulls-Grizzlies: 707K; Bucks-Hawks: 908K), and this year’s slate is unlikely to do any better.
NBA: Bucks-Heat (1p Sat ABC). Prediction: 0.6, 979K.
NBA: Heat-Hawks and Suns-Grizzlies (3:30 & 6p Mon TNT). Predictions: 681K & 715K.
Previous predictions
— Peach Bowl: Georgia-Ohio State. Prediction: 10.2 rating, 20.82M viewers; result: 9.8, 22.45M
— Fiesta Bowl: TCU-Michigan. Prediction: 8.6, 17.03M; result: 10.0, 21.70M
— Sugar Bowl: Alabama-Kansas State. Prediction: 8.63M; result: 9.14M
— Rose Bowl: Penn State-Utah. Prediction: 15.98M; result: 10.19M
— NFL: Bills-Bengals. Prediction: 22.85M; result: game called off
— NHL Winter Classic: Prediction: 2.00M; result: 1.78M
