The stage is set for another massive NFL weekend, as the league has put itself in prime position to attract a potentially record-setting TV audience for Sunday afternoon’s Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl LIX rematch.
After Week 1 viewership was up across the board, Fox’s broadcast of Philadelphia–Kansas City will be nationally televised to 100% of the country at 4:25 p.m. ET, with just two other games on CBS taking place in the same window (4:05 p.m. ET), Broncos-Colts and Panthers-Cardinals. Meanwhile, the network’s weekly pregame show, Fox NFL Sunday, is venturing away from its Los Angeles studio to broadcast live from Kansas City.
The Chiefs and Eagles know a little something about drawing big TV ratings. Each of their two Super Bowl matchups has drawn record viewership, with February’s game being watched by 127.7 million viewers.
In 2023, their rematch of Super Bowl LVII was the most-watched Monday Night Football game in 27 years, pulling in more than 29 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and streaming platforms.
Last year, the Chiefs were featured in four of the ten most-watched games of the regular season. The Eagles helped draw 28.3 million viewers against the Cowboys for this year’s kickoff game, despite a 65-minute weather delay. Before the game paused, it was on pace to average 31.6 million viewers and easily surpass last year’s milestone of 29.2 million for Ravens-Chiefs.
For Sunday’s matchup, the number to beat will be 27.87 million viewers—the audience for Chiefs-Bengals on CBS a year ago, which marked the largest Week 2 NFL rating since at least 1990.