NFL’s Expected Early-Season Ratings Boost Gets Off to a Stormy Start

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.