The NFL is headed into the playoffs with its head held high after scoring the best regular season audience in years.
Across all games, the regular season averaged 17.9M viewers on linear and digital platforms. That’s the highest since 2015 — tied with 2010 for the second-best season on record, which dates back to 1995. The most-watched game of the season was the Commanders-Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day with more than 40M tuning in.
The audience was up 7% year-over-year in terms of total audience, while the increase in viewership ranged from 4% to 10% in key demographics. Among the under 35 crowd, viewership was the highest it’s been since 2019.
Compared to last year, male viewership saw a 6% lift, while female viewership ballooned by 9%, marking the highest female viewership the NFL has ever recorded (with recording beginning in 2000).
All of this bodes very well for the playoffs, as Disney, Paramount, Fox Corp., NBCUniversal and Amazon are wrapping up the second year of a decade-long media rights deal, with the collective tab in the range of $110 billion. Streaming is a cornerstone of that spending, with Peacock paying an additional $100 million for the exclusive rights to a wild card game. Amazon’s Thursday Night Football exclusive posted a 24% uptick in viewership in Year 2.
One more sign of the streaming times has been the arrival of YouTube as a major partner. The digital video giant earlier this year took over Sunday Ticket, a popular regular season package that had been controlled for 29 years by DirecTV.
But what is behind the growing audience for the NFL? American football is without a doubt the most-watched program in the United States. Tens of millions of people tune in every week, and it is arguably what has kept broadcast television alive over the past several years as linear television ratings have nosedived. So, when trying to pinpoint what might be prompting an uptick, it is likely not as simple as the league gaining more popularity.
Explaining the Audience Growth
There is not one singular reason for the NFL’s promising regular season. Instead, it appears to be the perfect storm of a great season of football combined with players piercing the cultural zeitgeist far beyond the field. Yes, we are talking about Taylor Swift, at least in part.
This season, around 70% of matchups were within one score in the fourth quarter, leading to “really closely contested games, really competitive games, that more often than not had really fantastic finishes,” an NFL source said.
“I can remember a time when people were wondering when Peyton Manning was about to retire and then Tom Brady was at the end of his career, people were wondering about the next wave of stars,” they added. “I don’t think anybody’s wondering about it anymore. Whether it’s Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson. I mean, the league is full of superstars now.”
There is also Travis and Jason Kelce who, even before the former’s romance with one of the world’s most famous pop stars, were quickly becoming a beloved sports duo after their meeting at last year’s Super Bowl. Prime Video’s Kelce set a record as the streamer’s most-watched documentary ever in the U.S. when it debuted in September.
The brothers also have a well-regarded podcast that has become increasingly popular, especially because their discussions extend far beyond football. When it comes to the game, they gained a special notoriety for breaking it down to new listeners/viewers.
“Traditionally, people have thought about football players with their helmets on and maybe they didn’t get to know them much, but now with social media platforms [and] things like podcasts, I think people are getting to know these players in a way that they haven’t been able to before and they are attracted to the individual players,” the source explained.
While Swift herself certainly didn’t hurt the NFL’s ratings, there is no evidence to suggest she had an impact on the season as whole, considering she only attended a handful of the 270+ games. However, there is no denying her impact on a per-game basis.
In October, Prime Video measured an average female audience of 4.92M for its Broncos-Chiefs game, which marked an increase of 15% over the average female viewership of Thursday Night Football’’s first four games this season. That came one week after NBC saw a similar uptick in female viewership for the Chiefs-Jets game, which Swift also attended.
Non-Traditional Presentations
The NFL’s measurements also include “non-traditional presentations” of the NFL matchups, including the Manningcast, which is a version of ESPN’s Monday Night Football that includes commentary from Peyton and Eli Manning.
Those alternative options have become increasingly popular, the NFL source said. While the league still attracts a majority of its viewers from the traditional telecasts, those extra eyeballs can’t be ignored.
“It’s not a huge piece of the total audience, but it is when you’re talking about moving the needle up… 4%. I think those viewers do make a difference,” they added.
This year, in addition to the Super Bowl’s CBS broadcast, Nickelodeon will also host its own telecast of the big game, illustrating another method the NFL is using to expand its already broad purview. The league is hoping for a similar boost in viewership that telecasts like the Manningcast and digital streams bring, except this time from the younger crowd and possibly families who are looking for a kid-friendly way to watch the game.
“So people will be slimed during the game and they’ll have a bunch of things that kids are interested in,” the source said. “Nickelodeon has done a couple of games with us over the past couple of years in this fashion and they’ve been a big hit, so that kids can feel like there’s something that’s tailor made for them around the NFL, and then hopefully that increases their fandom and they become lifelong fans.”
Keeping the Momentum
The momentum of this season will be hard to beat, and it doesn’t seem like the NFL is particularly looking to do so. NFL ratings typically decline in election years, as they did during both 2016 and 2020. In these years, cable news viewership increases, likely stealing away the more casual NFL watchers who throw on the games at night but during election years are more interested in keeping up with the race.
The audience averages tend to increase again after the election, but that’s also when holiday games occur, which really boost the second half of the season too.
This year will likely be no different. Though, even with some marginal dips in viewership, the NFL is not likely to take a hit so hard that it would give up its position at the top of TV.
“We have such a dominant position on top of the industry right now that even if the momentum cools off a little bit next season, I think we’re still in really good shape,” the league source told Deadline.
The league will certainly benefit from the addition of some dynamic new players next season, namely USC’s Caleb Williams, stands to generate some interest for whichever team drafts him.
The regular season may be over, but there is still plenty of football left to be played — and some big audiences on the horizon, especially for the Super Bowl. Last year’s Chiefs-Eagles matchup drew 115M viewers, making it the most-watched U.S. telecast of all time. It is expected this year’s game will do at least north of 100M.