The highs and lows of the NFL’s evolving TV strategy in 2024 were on full display in Week 7, with a Super Bowl rematch accentuating the league’s regular-season ceiling, and an exclusive streaming broadcast revealing a surprising floor.
On the high end, Fox drew 27 million viewers for the Chiefs’ 28–18 victory Sunday afternoon over the 49ers, who failed to get revenge for their Super Bowl LVIII loss in February. That is the fourth-most-watched game of the season, extending Kansas City’s run of TV ratings dominance. The unbeaten Chiefs now have five of the six highest TV audiences this NFL season.
On the low end, the Cardinals’ 17–15 win over the Chargers on Monday night averaged 1.8 million viewers across ESPN+ and local over-the-air channels, according to ProFootballTalk. ESPN told Front Office Sports it would not be releasing specific audience numbers for the game, which started at 9 p.m. ET, and was the first exclusive Monday Night Football stream as part of a doubleheader.
The Ravens’ 41–31 win over the Buccaneers, which kicked off at 8:15 p.m., drew 16 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2, down 14% from a Vikings-49ers matchup in Week 7 last year.
Reading Between the Lines
While 1.8 million viewers would be great for many sports (the WNBA Finals averaged 1.57 million this month), things are different for the NFL. So much so that 4.9 million people tuned in to NFL Network two Sunday mornings ago for Jaguars-Bears in London. The smaller audiences of the previous two MNF doubleheaders this season drew 6.4 million (Jaguars-Bills, Week 3) and 5.61 million (Titans-Dolphins, Week 4) viewers on ESPN, according to Sports Media Watch.
In the future, a stand-alone game on ESPN+ (which has roughly 25 million subscribers) would likely draw a far larger audience than 1.8 million. Amazon Prime Video is averaging 13.31 million viewers for its exclusive streams of Thursday Night Football, and 14.2 million people watched Packers-Eagles on Peacock in Week 1.
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