2024 NFL TV Ratings Fall 2%, Still Dominate TV Landscape

2024 NFL TV Ratings Fall 2%, Still Dominate TV Landscape

SUMMARY:
The NFL’s 2024 regular season saw a slight 2.2% decrease in domestic viewership, averaging 17.5 million viewers per game. Despite this, the NFL remains the dominant force in U.S. broadcasting, with streaming platforms like Amazon and Netflix experiencing significant growth in viewership. Key factors influencing the season’s viewership include the performance of top teams like the Chiefs and Cowboys, as well as the increasing popularity of streaming options.

ARTICLE:
The NFL finished its 2024 regular season with somewhat diminished domestic viewership, but the league still reinforced its status as by far the biggest entity in U.S. broadcasting, regardless of genre.

The league averaged 17.5 million viewers per game across all networks, down 2.2% from a year ago. While a slight decrease from last year’s 7% viewership bump to 17.9 million, the 2024 numbers were far above any other programming, sports or otherwise, and the league’s overall media presence expanded with a critical new rights partner.

More broadly, streaming had an accelerating role in the NFL’s audience in 2024, with Amazon posting by far the biggest year-over-year increase of any rights holder, the major arrival of Netflix to live NFL games, and the broadcast networks getting larger-than-ever percentages of their pro football audiences from digital platforms.

Among the individual network results:

Amazon: The streamer registered an 11% year-over-year increase to an average of 13.2 million for its Thursday Night Football coverage, rising to 13% when also including its Black Friday game.
ESPN: The Disney-owned outlet posted its second-best season in 24 years of airing Monday Night Football, averaging 15 million viewers when including all 22 of its linear NFL games, including last weekend’s Saturday doubleheader involving AFC North teams. The figure is down by about 14%, but also shows how much of an outlier last year’s average of 17.4 million was. The 2023 season included 19 MNF simulcasts or exclusives on ABC, fueled in large part by actors’ and writers’ strikes in Hollywood that suspended production of entertainment content. This year’s simulcast count boosted at midseason, will reach 17 when including this Monday’s wild-card game.
Fox: The network averaged 18.4 million for all of its NFL coverage, down 3%. Its late Sunday afternoon America’s Game of the Week coverage led all league broadcast windows with an average of 23.9 million, also down 3%. Fox NFL Sunday also finished as the most-watched pregame show for the 31st straight year.
NBC: Sunday Night Football averaged 21.6 million viewers in total audience delivery, up 1% from 2023 and fueled in part by huge games to start and end the season. SNF’s digital audience between NBC’s own Peacock and NBCSports.com, as well as NFL Digital properties, rose 38% from last year to an average of 2.2 million per game.
Netflix: Making its live NFL debut on Christmas, the world’s largest streaming service averaged more than 24 million viewers for a high-profile doubleheader.
CBS did not disclose any season-ending viewership data, but the network did draw one of the year’s biggest audiences with the Nov. 17 Chiefs-Bills game that drew an average of 31.1 million. Industry sources said the network ended the season down 1% with an average of 19.2 million per game.

Several key factors fueled the season-ending results. The two-time defending champion Chiefs asserted themselves as the top draw among NFL viewers, while the perennial favorite Cowboys retreated this year with a 7–10 season—ultimately getting flexed to a lesser broadcast slot for a Week 17 game.

The most-watched game of the season was the late-afternoon Thanksgiving contest between the Giants and Cowboys, drawing a final average of 38.8 million. The season-ending ratings also arrived as the league claimed 70 of the top 100 broadcasts in the U.S. in 2024, down from 93 in 2023. The league average of 17.5 million viewers per game excludes figures from ESPN+, Peacock, and international games on the NFL Network.