NFL Sees Highest Viewership in More Than 35 Years

​​There’s nothing like the NFL in U.S. television, and the league has affirmed that once again.

The NFL finished the 2025 regular season with a per-game viewership average of 18.7 million, up 10% from last year’s mark, the best such total since 1989, and the second-best figure on record. Unlike more modest audience increases in recent years, and even a 2.2% drop during the 2024 campaign, this season featured sizable, across-the-board boosts involving every broadcast window and every rights holder. 

Among the individual network totals:

• Amazon: The streamer generated a per-game viewership average of 15.33 million, up 16% from last year and the highest level in the 20-year history of Thursday Night Football on any network. The 2025 campaign featured a series of milestones for Amazon, including a Christmas Day audience of 21.06 million that set a company record during the regular season.
• CBS: The Paramount-led broadcaster had its best NFL regular season ever, averaging 21.3 million for all its games, up 11% from a year ago. The network’s schedule was highlighted by a regular-season NFL record of more than 57 million viewers for a Thanksgiving clash between the Chiefs and Cowboys. The late Sunday afternoon NFL window on CBS also averaged 25.8 million viewers, more than any program on U.S. television. 
• ESPN: The Disney-owned outlet posted its second-best season in 20 years airing Monday Night Football, and averaged 16.5 million viewers when including all of 23 NFL games, up 10% from last year. 
• Fox: The network averaged 19.6 million viewers per game for all of its NFL coverage, up 6% from last year and its best mark since 2015. Fox NFL Sunday also finished as the most-watched NFL pregame show for the 32nd straight year, averaging 4.4 million viewers.
• NBC: Sunday Night Football averaged 23.5 million viewers in total audience delivery, up 9% from 2024. A record eight SNF games averaged more than 25 million viewers. Not surprisingly, SNF is also on track to be the No. 1 show in U.S. prime time for a 15th consecutive year, by far the largest streak in TV history. 
• Netflix: In its second year with a Christmas doubleheader, the outlet set a league streaming record, averaging 27.5 million viewers for a late-afternoon game between the Lions and Vikings. 
• NFL Network: The league-controlled outlet averaged 6.2 million viewers for coverage of six international games, up 32% from 2024, and the most-watched set of international games on record. 
• YouTube: The Google-owned outlet averaged 19.7 million for a September game from Brazil between the Chiefs and Chargers, but it generated widespread controversy for its use of a non-accredited method to measure that viewership. 

Some of the viewership boosts owe to Nielsen methodology enhancements such as an expansion of out-of-home tabulation and the arrival of the Big Data + Panel measurement process. The NFL, however, has been insistent that its rising popularity is transcending those process improvements, particularly as it still has some issues with the agency. 

A heavily front-loaded schedule to begin the 2025 season also gave the league a strong boost at the outset of play, one that ultimately held throughout the season.

Even in a downbeat season for the Chiefs, who will miss the playoffs for the first time since 2014, the team dominated the list of the 10 most-watched games. Kansas City was in four of the top five broadcasts, including the historic Thanksgiving clash. The defending champion Eagles were part of three of the top 10. 

The wild-card round, featuring six teams not in last year’s postseason, begins Saturday.