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NFL Regular Season Viewership Hits Highest Level Since 1989 at 18.7 Million Per Game

Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel with expanded out-of-home counting boosted reported audiences and complicated historical comparisons.

Overview

  • Every weekly rights holder posted gains, with CBS finishing as the most-watched package at about 21.25 million and its late Sunday window averaging 25.83 million.
  • NBC’s Sunday Night Football delivered a record 23.5 million Total Audience Delivery, including an average streaming audience of 2.5 million measured by Adobe Analytics, with eight games topping 25 million.
  • Amazon’s Thursday Night Football averaged 15.33 million, up 16% year over year and the best Thursday slate since the package began, highlighted by 21.06 million viewers on Christmas night.
  • Fox averaged 19.63 million for its best season since 2015, as America’s Game of the Week drew 25.28 million on average including 33.8 million for the Eagles‑Chiefs rematch.
  • Thanksgiving’s Chiefs‑Cowboys on CBS set an all-time regular-season record at 57.23 million, while ESPN/ABC’s Week 18 Seahawks‑49ers game reached 27.5 million as platform-specific counting and a disputed YouTube figure underscored comparability questions.