Sunday’s Chiefs-Bills game didn’t set a new viewership standard for the 2025 National Football League season, but came fairly close.
CBS said late Tuesday that it averaged 30.8 million viewers Sunday for its coverage of the Kansas City-Buffalo matchup, ranking as the second-most-watched game of the season thus far. The only NFL contest to draw a bigger audience was Fox’s average draw of 33.8 million viewers in Week 2 for a Super Bowl LIX rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs.
The audience total from Sunday wasn’t a surprise. The Chiefs and Bills have waged what is arguably the NFL’s best rivalry this decade, fueled in part by epic playoff battles in four of the last five seasons, as well as several more in recent years in the regular season.
CBS also buttressed its coverage significantly, showing the late-afternoon Sunday broadcast to 100% of the country while also bringing its pregame show, The NFL Today, to Highmark Stadium to broadcast live from there.
In addition to claiming the second-highest slot among NFL games this season, the Chiefs-Bills broadcast was also the network’s most-watched Week 9 NFL game since 2007, and was the most-watched program of the week on any network, even beating Fox’s coverage of the World Series. For the season, CBS is averaging 19.4 million viewers per game for its NFL coverage, up 6% from last year and its best season so far since 1998.
The Bills defeated the Chiefs by a 28–21 score, but both teams are still looking up at several other competitors in the American Football Conference playoff chase, including the Colts, Broncos, and Patriots.
An upcoming Thanksgiving clash on CBS between the Chiefs and Cowboys—involving two of the league’s most-watched teams in a massive broadcast window—will quite likely top all other games this season, and perhaps set a new mark as the NFL’s most-watched game ever in the regular season.
