The viewership behemoth that is the NFL continues to pull strong numbers, though Week 4 is a mixed bag versus last season.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football game between the Buffalo Bills and Baltimore Ravens averaged 22.3 million viewers last weekend, a number that includes both Nielsen’s linear television figure and Adobe Analytics’ streaming numbers. That is down 16.5% from last year’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and New York Jets, which averaged 26.7 million viewers across television and streaming. While Sunday’s game didn’t have the Taylor Swift effect of last year’s game, SNF has still averaged over 20 million viewers across television and streaming in each of its first five games this season.
ESPN’s second Monday Night Football doubleheader in as many weeks produced over a million more viewers during its overlap period than it did last week. Week 3’s Jaguars-Bills/Commanders-Bengals doubleheader averaged over 19 million combined viewers during a two-hour and fifteen-minute overlap while Week 4’s Titans-Dolphins/Seahawks-Lions doubleheader combined for 20.3 million viewers during the overlap period.
Per ESPN PR, Seahawks-Lions on ABC averaged more than 15 million viewers alone, down from 16.59 million viewers for Seahawks-Giants last season, with the obvious caveat that last year’s game did not have other NFL competition. Year-over-year comparisons for Monday Night Football are likely to take a downturn in the next few weeks as games begin to air exclusively on ESPN without an ABC simulcast. Three of the first four weeks of MNF this season have seen broadcasts air on both ABC and ESPN, while every game last season was simulcast on ABC, a writers’ strike-era tactic that ultimately boosted viewership for the property.
As for the afternoon slate, Fox’s singleheader coverage averaged 17.2 million viewers, up a tick versus last year on CBS which averaged 16.9 million viewers. Viewership data for CBS doubleheader coverage, which includes the Kansas City Chiefs-Los Angeles Chargers late afternoon game, was not immediately available.
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.