It failed to live up to the hype on the field, but the first playoff meeting between the NFL’s most prominent team and player delivered as expected in the ratings.
Monday’s Cowboys-Buccaneers NFL NFC Wild Card playoff game averaged 30.6 million viewers on ESPN and ABC, per Nielsen fast-nationals, making it the most-watched NFL game on the ESPN family of networks since Super Bowl 40 on ABC in 2006 — and the most-watched outside of the Super Bowl since Cardinals-Cowboys on ABC in 1999 (30.7M). ESPN expects the final viewership figure released Wednesday to surpass the 1999 game and rank as the highest for any NFL game on ESPN or ABC since the networks were acquired by Disney in 1996.
The Cowboys’ easy win, which peaked before halftime with 35.6 million viewers, increased 32% from Cardinals-Rams in the same Monday night window last year.
Pitting the league’s highest-profile team against its most decorated player, Cowboys-Buccaneers was ESPN/ABC’s highest-profile playoff matchup in recent memory. Such a matchup would typically air in one of the NFL’s higher-rated Sunday windows. Last season, the Cowboys’ similarly high-profile Wild Card game against the 49ers averaged a considerably-higher 41.5 million viewers in the late Sunday afternoon window on CBS and Nickelodeon.
Figures for most of the other Wild Card weekend games were not immediately available, but Cowboys-Buccaneers averaged the same number of viewers as Dolphins-Bills on CBS in Sunday’s early afternoon window. The Dolphins-Bills game had a higher peak audience at 39.56 million.
While ESPN’s regular season viewership declined year-over-year, the addition of the Wild Card game brings the network’s full season average up to 14.8 million — its highest across the regular season and playoffs since it began airing NFL playoff games in the 2014-15 season.
(Nielsen estimates from ESPN PR)
