A 65-minute weather delay in the NFL’s season opener Thursday night in Philadelphia could be the thing that blunts the league’s viewership momentum, at least somewhat, as the 2025 season starts.

Audience numbers from the Eagles’ 24–20 win over the Cowboys on NBC in the league’s kickoff game won’t be out until early next week, largely due to increased processing time required with Nielsen’s newly introduced Big Data + Panel measurement system. A similar situation last year on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, however, provides a recent parallel on just how damaging an extended delay like this can be to ratings.

An Oct. 6 game last season between the Cowboys and Steelers was marred by a postponement of nearly 90 minutes at the start, also due to severe weather. That contest drew an average audience of 20.3 million people, the lowest SNF figure to that point of the season, down 23% from the comparable Week 5 game in 2023, and below the season-long average of 21.6 million for the Sunday primetime showcase. 

That result was particularly striking given the status of Dallas and Pittsburgh as two of the NFL’s most popular teams, a long-standing rivalry between them that includes three meetings in the Super Bowl, and a competitive game, once it started, that saw the Cowboys prevail 20–17 after a game-winning touchdown with 20 seconds left. 

The delay in the Cowboys-Eagles game comparatively happened much later, arriving in the third quarter. When play resumed at 11:30 p.m. ET, however, the crowd at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia had thinned considerably, and even more so when the game finally ended at 12:18 a.m. on Friday.

According to Nielsen sources, it was initially expected that the viewership data for the game Thursday, when it does arrive, would take into account the entirety of the broadcast, inclusive of the delay. Later Friday, though, the agency reversed course and sources said the forthcoming figures will likely omit the period of the game delay.

Bigger Concerns

Despite the arrival of Big Data + Panel, and the promise of more accurate viewership data, the NFL remains frustrated with Nielsen, in part due to a perceived undercounting of audiences in other respects. Among the specific issues for the league is people watching games collectively at home, known as co-viewing in Nielsen data.

“It’s been a protracted journey [with Nielsen], and we can’t get them out of neutral,” said NFL chief data and analytics officer Paul Ballew.

Amid that tension, though, the NFL still sits in a very strong position, particularly in the first month of the season when it has scheduled a series of blockbuster games. NBC will be firmly among that early sprint, coming right back this weekend for a major SNF clash between the Ravens and Bills, two of the top three favorites in Super Bowl LX betting odds.

Major League Baseball remains on track to eke out a very small attendance increase for the 2025 season, but recent data shows a widening spread between teams, similar to what’s happening in other facets of the sport.

The league is currently averaging 29,236 per game, just 22 people above the comparable mark from last year, representing a 0.07% increase. League officials, after a full season of optimism in this area, remain hopeful that the final figures will produce a third straight year above 70 million, which hasn’t happened in this critical metric since 2015–17, and then in a declining fashion.

“We’re having another great attendance year, we’re going to be above 70 million again,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a recent appearance on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball. 

Winners Draw, Losers Drift

The final stretch of the season, however, can also be fraught with more challenging situations, particularly among teams out of the playoff race. The expanded, 14-team playoff field was designed, in part, to mitigate that, but recent weeks have seen some ugly history being made in some markets.

The Twins, already in the midst of large-scale transition and fan unrest, drew a collective total of 36,813 this week for the final three games of a four-game home series against the White Sox, all losses to the American League’s worst team. That combined figure would not even fill Target Field once, and it follows the team posting a series of non-pandemic lows at the 15-year-old ballpark. Minnesota is also on track to post by far the worst full-season market at Target Field, excluding 2020 and 2021. 

The Cardinals, similarly, had an announced attendance of 17,002 against the A’s on Tuesday, the worst mark at the current Busch Stadium since it opened in 2006, again excluding the pandemic.

The A’s, meanwhile, continue to have their own challenges in the first year of a three-season interim stay in Sacramento while a new ballpark in Las Vegas is built. The team has not reached 10,000 for any single home game at Sutter Health Park there since the All-Star break, after regularly doing so in the season’s first half. Perhaps not coincidentally, the club has already unveiled plans to play two home series next season at Las Vegas Ballpark, the home venue of their top minor-league affiliate. 

Those situations contrast against other attendance success stories in the league, particularly the Mets, which still have the league’s biggest increase with a 39% surge to more than 39,000 per game. The Padres, meanwhile, are assured of setting a franchise record for a third straight season and will move past the prior mark of 3.3 million set last year.

That accelerating split parallels a growing fiscal divide in the league, one that will be central in labor negotiations next year between the league and the MLB Players Association.

The NCAA appears to be headed toward shifting to a single, shorter transfer-portal window for football players, aimed at limiting the chaotic movement that has occurred under its current system.

On Thursday, the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision Oversight Committee recommended legislative changes that would eliminate the spring transfer period and change the winter window from a 20-day period in December to a 10-day timeline of Jan. 2–11.

On the Move?

The current transfer-portal windows (football):

• Winter: Dec. 9–28
• Spring: April 16–25

The proposed transfer-portal window (football):

• Winter: Jan. 2–11

The recommendation is a significant step, with the Division I Administrative Committee now scheduled to vote on implementing the new policy before Oct. 1.

Many coaches and other college football leaders have bemoaned the current transfer-portal system, which saw record movement in both the most recent spring and winter windows. This past season, the transfer portal opened Dec. 9, with many players leaving teams that were preparing for the College Football Playoff and other bowl games. 

While the new single transfer window, if approved, wouldn’t necessarily prevent disgruntled players from stepping away from their team at the end of the regular season, it could provide more opportunities for players to compete in the postseason before transferring.

The elimination of the spring window would help prevent messy situations like now-UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava’s breakup with his former team, Tennessee. Iamaleava chose to enter the transfer portal in the spring window.

Another recommendation from the oversight committee is to make the entire month of December a recruiting dead period. Jan. 5–31 would remain a recruiting period, when coaches can have contact with or evaluate prospects.