NFL Viewership Climbs As ESPN, Amazon Deliver Double-Digit Gains

As the NFL hits the midway point of the 2026 season, viewership is nearing a historic high, and weekday games have been a key driver. 

Through Week 9, the league is averaging 18.3 million viewers per game, representing the second-highest audience average on record for this point of the season, and up 2% from 2025. The NFL’s dominance across U.S. media remains firmly intact, as the league has the top 49 shows since the start of the current television season. 

After last season’s viewership reached a 36-year high, the NFL had a steep climb to surpass that in 2026, though optimism was high among league executives following the schedule release in May.

A critical element in the subsequent audience growth has been the league’s two weekday game packages. ESPN is averaging 19 million viewers for its Monday Night Football package, up 24% from the comparable point in 2025, as it ramps up toward its first Super Bowl in February. The network has also set several individual game records for MNF broadcasts this season, including this week’s Bills-Vikings game that averaged 21.7 million viewers and was the best Week 9 broadcast in ESPN’s MNF era that began in 2006. 

ESPN also has had a more focused MNF schedule this season following its large-scale equity deal with the NFL.

Amazon, meanwhile, is averaging 17.2 million viewers for Thursday Night Football so far this season, up 13% from last year’s midseason mark and up 12% from the 2025 full-season average that set a network record since gaining exclusive rights in 2022. Week-to-week TNF audience increases that have steadily reached double-digit percentages have been a confirmation of the improved schedule that Amazon received this year. 

The audience strength in the NFL’s two weekday packages counters, at least to some degree, the rising scrutiny facing the NFL regarding a perceived lessening of the Sunday broadcast windows. Even as the total number of Sunday games has stayed relatively flat in recent years, that element has still been a subject of heightened governmental and regulatory pressure. 

Among the NFL’s Sunday rights holders, CBS is averaging 19.5 million viewers and is on pace for its most-watched season to date. The network also has the two most-watched games so far this season, both AFC West matchups involving the Chiefs, and three of the top five. Fox is averaging 18.5 million viewers, and NBC is averaging 22.5 million viewers for its Sunday Night Football package, with each of those measures off slightly from those networks’ full-season averages in 2025. 

The NFL Network, now under ESPN control, just finished a record-setting run of international games on Sunday mornings. 

The NFL is now headed toward the highly watched Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, including a newly created Thanksgiving Eve game on Netflix. The late afternoon Thanksgiving Day game, normally the league’s high point of the entire regular season, contains far less luster this season. An Eagles-Cowboys matchup on Fox that initially had high hopes is now certain to include at least one and potentially two losing teams.