NFL Achieves Week 1 Ratings Record with 21 Million Average Viewers Per Game

The National Football League averaged 21 million viewers each game during the league’s opening week. As a result, it achieved a Week 1 ratings record. On Wednesday, Nielsen and the NFL released the number of viewers on digital platforms and TV. According to bookie PPH experts, it increased 12 percent compared to last year. In addition, Nielsen started monitoring viewership numbers in 1988.

The cumulative viewership for the first week was 123 million, the most since 2019.

The Chiefs’ 27-20 win over the Ravens attracted an average of 29.2 million viewers across television and digital platforms. In addition, this game was NBC’s most-watched one this season.

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NFL Week 1 Ratings Record

This was NBC’s second-biggest regular-season game since it bought the “Sunday Night Football” package in 2006. The Detroit Lions won against the Rams in overtime on Sunday and drew an average of 22.7 million viewers, a 3% increase from the previous year.

At an average of 23.93 million viewers, Tom Brady’s first game as head coach of Fox Sports was the Cowboys’ 33-17 victory against the Browns. The six games that made up Fox’s doubleheader—four in the morning and two in the afternoon—averaged 18.64 million viewers, marking the network’s highest start since 2020. For Week 1, this marked the first Fox featured a Sunday afternoon doubleheader since 2020. For the previous three seasons, the opening Sunday has seen two games broadcast by CBS and one by Fox.

According to bookie pay per head solutions experts, CBS’s most Week 1 singleheader viewership since reacquiring NFL rights in 1998, with 17.79 million viewers on average for all six games. The majority of CBS’s affiliates had games scheduled for 1 p.m. ET. However, at 4:05 p.m., New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Pittsburgh were treated to Jim Harbaugh’s debut game as coach of the Chargers, opposing the Raiders.

NFL Week 1 Games

As a league regulation, no game may be televised in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, or Pittsburgh during CBS’ early window unless it is the home team’s game. On Peacock and NBC stations in Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, 14.0 million people saw the Eagles beat the Packers 34-29 in the first NFL Friday night Week 1 game in 54 years. After last year’s AFC wild-card match between Miami and Kansas City, this was Peacock’s second-most-watched live event in its four-year existence.

This year’s average was lower than last year’s opening between the Jets and Buffalo, which drew 22.7 million.

At an average of 20.4 million viewers, the San Francisco 49ers’ game against the New York Jets was the year’s first “Monday Night Football” game. However, this was down from last year’s opener, which saw Aaron Rodgers tear his ACL in the game’s first minutes. This is mainly because most DirecTV customers could not watch the Jets/49es game due to a carriage dispute with Disney.

Despite a widespread fall in linear TV viewing, NFL games have long been the one exception. With 93 of the top 100 rated shows in 2023 coming from league football games, the trend continued from 2021 to 2022, when 75 of the top 100 came from the same genre. There was an almost 10% increase in viewership for the playoff games last season compared to the previous year.

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