The 2024 NFL season got off to a strong start last weekend, and while online pundits and media watchers grumbled about Tom Brady’s debut in the Fox booth, the TV turnout for the Sunday windows was beyond reproach.
According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the first five TV windows of the fall campaign averaged 19.86 million viewers, good for a 14% lift versus the year-ago period (17.59 million). While the Sunday afternoon format wasn’t an exact match with the 2023 opener—after three years of staging non-exclusive doubleheaders in Week 1, the NFL reverted to the standard regional/national setup—the overall deliveries suggest that an awful lot of Americans had been jonesing for football after the long hiatus.
NBC won the week with the Ravens-Chiefs Kickoff Game, as the linear broadcast averaged 24.56 million viewers, down 194,000 compared to last season’s Lions-Chiefs scrap. A boost in streaming impressions more than made up for the small lag in TV deliveries; all told, Kansas City’s 27-20 victory averaged 29.16 million viewers, which marked a 6% increase versus the year-ago blended average (27.54 million).
Also putting up big numbers was the Fox late-national window, which featured Dallas and Cleveland with coverage in 94% of all markets. While the game itself was a bit of a snooze—Dak Prescott & Co. romped to a 33-17 win over a Browns team led by a thoroughly washed Deshaun Watson—the Cowboys performed their usual brand of ratings juju. In Brady’s first live game as a broadcaster, Fox averaged 23.93 million viewers. While that was good for a 47% increase over last year’s window (16.27 million for Packers-Bears with 84% coverage), it’s worth noting that Fox last year had to compete with CBS in the late window (Eagles-Patriots, 21.35 million, 69% coverage).
If Brady was less than polished in his first start, the Nielsen data should probably serve as a reminder that booth talent doesn’t dictate ratings performance. Case in point: Monday Night Football averaged 18.48 million viewers per game in 2000, when Dennis Miller was tapped to relieve Boomer Esiason in the ABC huddle. When the great John Madden replaced the comedian in 2002, MNF averaged 16.91 million viewers per game. Determining causality is a heavy lift, but no one with a functioning brain stem believes that more people watched the 2000 season because Miller was better at calling football than John Earl Madden.
At any rate, the NFL’s decision to stop cannibalizing the Week 1 Sunday afternoon showcase worked out for all parties involved, as CBS’ regional singleheader scared up 17.78 million viewers, making it the network’s most-watched 1 p.m. ET opener since it got back in the NFL rotation in 1998. The usual caveats about how out-of-home lifts skew comps to years preceding 2020 aside, the early-afternoon results marked a 39% improvement versus last season’s regional window.
Among the matchups on CBS’ Sunday slate were Pats-Bengals, Cards-Bills and Jags-Dolphins.
Opposite CBS in the early window, Fox averaged 13.03 million viewers, up 28% versus last season. Fox’s matinee included Steelers-Falcons, Vikings-Giants and Titans-Bears.
NBC closed out the first Sunday of the new season with just shy of 20 million TV viewers (19.997 million, to be precise) for its coverage of the Rams-Lions nailbiter in Detroit. The linear deliveries were effectively flat versus the year-ago 20.18 million fans who endured Dallas’ 40-0 thumping of the Giants.
The Sunday Night Football numbers do not include streaming impressions, although Peacock added another 2.7 million viewers to the mix. That said, the Lions’ home win beat out SNF’s 2023 linear-TV average by some 157,000 viewers.
Including the deliveries generated by NBC affiliates in Green Bay, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, Peacock’s presentation of Friday night’s Packers-Eagles game in Brazil averaged approximately 14 million viewers. Philly’s 34-29 victory now stands as the second most-watched live event on the streaming service, nearly doubling the Bills-Chargers exclusive on Dec. 23 of last year (7.33 million) and trailing only the Dolphins-Chiefs AFC Wild Card Game on Jan. 13 (22.86 million).
The Week 1 ratings will be complete once the Monday Night Football numbers on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 land later Tuesday.
