An essentially meaningless NFL exhibition game held last week with two fairly nondescript teams drew a massive viewership number, suggesting very big things to come for the league during the rest of the preseason and then during the 2026 regular season.
Last Thursday’s Pro Football Hall of Fame Game between the Cardinals and Panthers averaged 7 million viewers on NBC Sports and the Peacock streaming network. That figure is the highest for the NFL’s preseason opener from Canton, Ohio since the 2021 version involving the Steelers and Cowboys, and up 1% from last year’s more high-profile matchup involving the Chargers and Lions.
While it’s hardly surprising that the NFL continues to assert itself as the biggest thing in all of U.S. television, regardless of genre, this latest football game had a higher viewership than:
- Every MLB regular-season game so far this season, including a high-profile Sunday night matchup in late June between the Red Sox and Yankees
- The 2026 Home Run Derby, streamed exclusively on Netflix
- The U.S. coverage of every NHL Stanley Cup Final game in June
- The men’s and women’s finals at Wimbledon
- The final round of The Open in golf
What makes the latest NFL preseason opener even more striking is that Carolina and Arizona are two of the less popular teams in the league. While the Panthers reached last year’s playoffs in a historically weak NFC South division, neither that team nor the Cardinals are expected to be serious Super Bowl LXI contenders, with Arizona in particular entering the 2026 season as the biggest long shot in preseason betting odds.
Following the NFL’s 2026 schedule release in May, the league held particularly high hopes for the forthcoming season and the prospect of increased viewership after the 2025 regular season had the best average since 1989. The inherent strength of the league, its broad viewership appeal, and the active involvement of each of the domestic rights holders are key factors.
So, too, will be a forthcoming enhancement in Nielsen’s co-viewing methodology, the agency’s third major change to its audience measurement in less than two years.
Notably, the Hall of Fame Game previously drew even larger audiences when it aired on a Sunday night. The last such edition on a Sunday, a Vikings-Steelers game in 2015, averaged 11 million viewers on NBC.
This year’s Hall of Fame Game preceded an induction ceremony for a 2026 Pro Football Hall of Fame class that included Drew Brees, Roger Craig, Larry Fitzgerald Jr., Luke Kuechly, and Adam Vinatieri, and notably omitted Patriots owner Robert Kraft and former head coach Bill Belichick.
