NFL Divisional Round Ratings Open With Record High—and a Dip

An overtime postseason thriller for the NFL drew an unprecedented audience last Saturday, while a subsequent primetime blowout provided a minor speed bump in the league’s banner season for viewership.

CBS said late Wednesday that it averaged 39.6 million viewers for its divisional playoff coverage of the Bills at the Broncos. The game, won by Denver 33–30 in overtime, led to Buffalo firing head coach Sean McDermott. The television audience, however, represented the most-watched Saturday NFL playoff game in league history and topped last year’s comparable game, a Texans-Chiefs matchup on ESPN and ABC, by 17%. 

During the overtime period of the Buffalo-Denver game, the audience peaked at nearly 51.3 million viewers. The contest was also the most-watched Saturday telecast on any network since the 1994 Winter Olympics, and was also the most-watched Saturday afternoon telecast in U.S. television history. 

With this latest figure from the divisional round, CBS is also posting its best-ever NFL season at this point, averaging 22.3 million viewers per game.

NFC Stumble

Fox, meanwhile, was not so fortunate with its Saturday night coverage of the 49ers at the Seahawks, a 41–6 blowout win for Seattle that had none of the gripping drama that was core to the earlier game. That contest averaged 32 million viewers, down 5% from a comparable Commanders-Lions game last year on Fox, and the second straight annual decline for the divisional playoffs in that window. 

Viewership data from the two divisional playoff games last Sunday—Texans at Patriots on ESPN and ABC, and the Rams at the Bears on NBC—is expected Thursday. 

The initial results from the divisional round, and particularly the historic figures from Denver, veered from the sharper declines in three of the four divisional playoff games last year. Overall, the television situation has amounted to a banner season for the NFL with a series of audience milestones during the regular season, in the wild-card round, and on streaming. 

Beyond the overall rising profile and popularity for the NFL, the league’s viewership numbers have also seen a boost from the arrival of new and expanded Nielsen methodologies to track audiences, notably Big Data + Panel.