NBC Sports delivered a near-record audience for the NFL’s season-opening game on Sept. 4, just missing history due to an in-game weather delay. 

The network said Monday it averaged 28.3 million viewers for the Eagles’ 24–20 victory over the Cowboys, representing the second-best audience for an NFL kickoff game, trailing only last year’s Ravens-Chiefs clash to open the 2024 season that drew an average audience of 29.2 million. 

The broadcast from Philadelphia, however, was a story of two parts, punctuated by the severe weather locally that produced a 65-minute delay during the third quarter. During that first chunk, the game was on pace to average 31.6 million viewers and easily surpass last year’s milestone. The post-delay audience, stretching from 11:24 p.m. to 12:18 a.m. ET, fell to an average of 20.2 million, dragging down the final figure for the full game. 

Original expectations last week from Nielsen were that the game measurement would be inclusive of the weather delay, but the agency then reversed course and said that it would be omitted. That ultimately turned out to be the case once the data arrived, but the weather still had a significant impact. 

That post-delay audience was just 59% of the peak viewership of 34.3 million registered during the second quarter. 

A similar situation happened last year when an Oct. 6 Sunday Night Football game 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 Cowboys-Eagles matchup was the first game of the NFL’s 2025 regular season to feature data from Nielsen’s newly introduced Big Data + Panel measurement process, which incorporates additional data from set-top boxes and smart TVs, and is designed to provide a more accurate view. 

Data from YouTube’s livestream of the Sept. 5 game in Brazil between the Chiefs and Chargers, which fell below expectations, did not include Big Data + Panel methodology, angering other networks.

The streaming audience for the kickoff game on Peacock and other NBC and NFL digital platforms averaged 4.9 million, the network’s second-best simulstreamed NFL game ever and topping streams for three prior Super Bowls that it aired.

The NFL’s latest rule change, aimed at making the game more exciting for fans, had an immediate impact on the field during the 2025 season’s opening weekend.

In April, NFL owners voted to make the league’s dynamic kickoff permanent, after first implementing it last season, and moved touchbacks from the 30-yard line to the 35. The idea was to encourage more kickoff returns, and through 15 of the 16 games in Week 1, the league is getting its wish.

So far, 18.6% of kickoffs have produced a touchback, which is down substantially from 64.5% in Week 1 last season and 77.6% in Week 1 of the 2023 season, according to ESPN data.

NFL executives predicted this year’s changes would result in the kickoff return rate rising from roughly 33% last season to somewhere between 60% and 70%. 

While there have been no kickoffs returned for a touchdown so far in Week 1, Titans return man Chimere Dike took a kickoff back 71 yards to the opposing 24-yard line against the Broncos, setting up a field goal at the end of the second quarter. Throughout the weekend, many teams opted to kick the ball short of the end zone to ensure a return.

Kickoff Craze

The NFL’s kickoff rules have been evolving since 2016, when the league moved touchbacks from the 20-yard line to the 25. Last season, touchbacks were moved to the 30-yard line alongside the implementation of the dynamic kickoff, which has been criticized by many fans and even President Donald Trump.

“The worst part of the Super Bowl, by far, was watching the Kickoff where, as the ball is sailing through the air, the entire field is frozen, stiff,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in February. “College Football does not do it, and won’t! Whose idea was it to ruin the Game?” Trump had previously criticized the kickoff earlier last season, too.

Should the higher return rate continue throughout the season, an important factor to consider will be whether more kickoff returns result in more significant injuries, as making the play safer has been the primary reason for the NFL’s continued kickoff tweaks. 

After nearly six months of delays, ticket marketplace StubHub is reviving its plans for an initial public offering, but with many of the same macro-level issues that surrounded the initial effort.

The company issued an amended prospectus on Monday for the IPO and has initiated an investor roadshow, looking to raise as much as $851 million from the sale of more than 34 million shares. The new effort, following one from March and advancing upon it with new pricing details, is targeting a valuation of about $9.2 billion as StubHub reenters what it hopes will be a calmer market. StubHub previously paused the IPO plans due to prior turbulence in the stock market in the wake of tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Multinational ticket company Viagogo has owned StubHub since 2020 after acquiring it from the publicly traded eBay in a $4.05 billion deal. Viagogo is backed in part by several private-equity firms and StubHub shareholders, including Madrone Capital Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.

The global ticket market, however, remains in a period of transition and turbulence, even as consumers continue to return in force to live events. StubHub posted a net loss of $111.8 million for the first half of 2025 on $827.9 million in revenue, more than double the comparable loss of $50.2 million in the comparable period in 2024 on $803.5 million in revenue. Currency-related issues contributed significantly to the amplified loss.  

Other companies, however, have seen similar issues. Vivid Seats went public in 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company, but has seen its stock lose more than 93% of its value since then, and it completed a reverse stock split last month. SeatGeek has considered an IPO on multiple occasions but has yet to do so, and reportedly had a wave of layoffs early this year. Ticketmaster parent Live Nation is a notable outlier, with its stock up by 28% this year.

StubHub’s core mission in its new structure, though, is to blend primary and secondary ticketing in a far deeper way. A recent agreement with Major League Baseball is a step in that direction, as it will incorporate direct issuance technology to allow fans to access primary-market tickets through StubHub. 

“There is a critical need for a global marketplace that ensures liquidity, transparency, and trust for all ticketing transactions, whether they involve secondary sales or original issuance,” StubHub said in the prospectus. 

Erased Memory

The revised StubHub prospectus, meanwhile, continues to omit the contributions of company cofounder Jeff Fluhr. The formation of StubHub 25 years ago was a combined initiative between Viagogo CEO Eric Baker and Fluhr, then a fellow Stanford student. As CEO of StubHub in the early 2000s, Fluhr led key efforts such as fundraising and the signing of initial sports team and league partners that gave the company a critical early stamp of legitimacy. 

As was the case in the spring, though, the latest IPO prospectus repeatedly refers to Baker as a singular founder of StubHub and does not mention Fluhr, now a venture capitalist, at all.

Baker, who left the company in 2004 before returning years later, will still hold 88% of StubHub’s voting power after the IPO. 

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have turned into the final bosses of men’s tennis. For the second consecutive year, the duo swept the four Grand Slams, each taking two apiece.

They’ve faced off in five tournament finals since May, including two ATP 1000 events and three consecutive Grand Slams. It’s the first time in history that two men have battled in three straight Grand Slam finals in the same calendar year.

The duo still has several opportunities this year to square off and cement their rivalry while also climbing up tennis’s all-time career earnings list. Following the US Open, Alcaraz stayed at sixth ($53.5 million), closing his gap to fifth-place Alexander Zverev ($54.7 million) to a little over a million dollars. Jannik Sinner moved up to seventh ($48.8 million). 

Two ATP 1000 events remain: the Shanghai Masters in three weeks and the Paris Masters at the end of October. Sinner won the event in China last year, though neither has won the event in France. Both tournaments have a grand prize worth north of $1 million.

There is also the ATP Finals in November in Turin, Italy. The event, which includes only the top eight players, normally has the largest potential grand prize in tennis, though this year’s prize pool has yet to be revealed. Sinner won $4.9 million last year, the largest payout in a single ATP event until it was eclipsed by the $5 million Alcaraz won at the US Open on Sunday.

However, the ATP Final pays out players differently from most tennis tournaments, as the champion’s final sum will depend on their overall performance through the tournament. The tournament includes a group stage where a player could drop a match and still finish as the champion.

With millions of dollars still up for grabs, Alcaraz, 22, has a strong chance to pass Zverev and enter the top five. Sinner, 24, could also theoretically pass Alcaraz and reach the top five with a repeat victory in the ATP Final, but he’d likely need the Spaniard to withdraw from most of the remaining tournaments.

However, the young duo still has a long way to go before catching all-time earnings leader Novak Djokovic, who eclipsed $190 million after making the US Open semifinals. The 38-year-old also moved up to world No. 4 by making the final four, which included a win over former world No. 4 Taylor Fritz in the quarterfinals. 

There are several other non-ATP tennis tournaments in the calendar that come with prize money, but are not considered in the official ATP earnings count. That includes the Laver Cup in two weeks, though Sinner is not scheduled to compete. Alcaraz is on Team Europe.

The Davis Cup, won by Sinner and Italy last year, is in November.