Despite posting two audiences that any other professional sports league would do cartwheels for, the NFL’s Divisional Round doubleheader on Sunday hit four-year viewership lows.
According to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, Sunday’s game between the Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills on CBS averaged 42.2 million viewers, down 16% from last year’s game featuring the Kansas City Chiefs’ win over the Bills (50.4 million viewers). The Bills’ win over the Ravens was the least-watched Divisional Round game in the late Sunday window since the Tampa Bay Buccaneers-New Orleans Saints game in 2021 (35.5 million viewers on Fox).
Even with the double-digit decline from last season, Ravens-Bills delivered the most-watched audience of the NFL season so far, eclipsing the mark set by the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day.
Over on NBC, the Sunday afternoon game between the Los Angeles Rams and Philadelphia Eagles averaged an audience of 37.8 million viewers when including additional streaming figures from Adobe Analytics. That number is down 6% from 40.4 million viewers by the same measure for a Buccaneers-Lions game during the same window on NBC last year.
That too was a four-year low for the Sunday afternoon Divisional Round window.
According to Lewis, eight of ten NFL playoff games so far this season have declined year-over-year. The two exceptions are the Saturday afternoon Texans-Chiefs game, which was up slightly versus Texans-Ravens last season on ESPN/ABC, and the Broncos-Bills Wild Card game last Sunday on CBS, which drew even to last year’s Steelers-Bills Wild Card game that was postponed to Monday due to weather.
The declines might speak more to the strength of last year’s playoff slate than any poor performances this year. Last year’s playoffs were lifted by the participation of both the Dallas Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs — the league’s two biggest viewership draws — in the Wild Card round. The Chiefs, of course, went on to win the Super Bowl while the Cowboys had a first round exit.
Nevertheless, that is two fewer games featuring the league’s top viewership teams than last year’s playoffs, given the Chiefs had a first round bye and the Cowboys did not make the postseason at all.
In today’s era of television viewing, these figures should still be seen as an undeniable success. The NFL is now setup for a couple of big audiences for its Championship Round with the Chiefs and Bills renewing their rivalry on Sunday evening and one of the league’s rising stars, Jayden Daniels, leading the Washington Commanders into Philadelphia to take on the large-market Eagles on Sunday afternoon.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.