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The NFL weathered the viewership impact of the 2024 U.S. presidential election and the Paris Olympics about as well as possible, ending the year as once again the most dominant entity on American television.
The league finished 2024 with its 70 of the 100 most-watched events in the U.S. during the year. That number—while obviously far more than every other form of programming combined—is down sharply from the overwhelming 93 of the top 100 the NFL had in 2023. It is nearly identical, though, to the 71 slots it claimed in 2020, the last presidential election year.
While the sharp drop in the number of NFL games on the 2024 list could suggest some year-over-year erosion in the league’s viewership, that’s not at all the case. The calendar year started with a bang for the league, with each round of the 2023 season playoffs showing year-over-year audience growth, peaking with a U.S. television record audience of 123.4 million for Super Bowl LVIII in February.
In the current regular season, NFL viewership has stayed steady with last year’s robust figure of 17.9 million per game. Instead, the league’s peak games in 2024 were joined on the year-end list by a series of high-profile political events held over the summer and fall, including the more than 67 million who watched the Sept. 10 presidential debate between Republican and eventual winner Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris across 17 networks.
Despite that, the league did not see a repeat of the often-seen presidential-year audience decline that in particular reached 8% in 2016, and had been feared to some degree again in 2024.
Other notable sports entrants on the top-100 list were multiple nights of the Paris Olympics and Game 5 of the World Series—each an event that showed significant audience growth in 2024 compared to recent predecessors—and the NCAA women’s basketball final between South Carolina and Iowa involving Caitlin Clark that drew a record audience of 18.7 million.
The NBA, whose viewership issues have been a dominant storyline this season, did not crack the list at all, particularly for a Finals in June that saw its audience fall 3%. But that league hasn’t shown up on this top-100 list since 2019.
The NFL’s highlights for the year, meanwhile, include not only Super Bowl LVIII but also conference title games that generated historically high viewership and, more recently, top regular-season games such as the Thanksgiving Day draw of 38.5 million for a game between the Giants and Cowboys. The list also includes several streaming exclusives, including the historic Christmas Day doubleheader on Netflix.
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