It's no surprise that the NFL pulled in large audiences for the opening week of the 2024 season — it's the biggest TV event around. But the viewership for the league’s week one games (and the start of week two) exceeded expectations.
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| Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills Carmen Mandato/Getty Images |
The NFL reported that the over-the-air games on NBC, CBS, Fox, and ABC/ESPN during week one averaged 21 million viewers across all platforms.
This marks the highest average for an opening week in history, though it's important to note that Nielsen didn't count out-of-home viewing before 2020, and streaming options for NFL games have only been widely available in recent years.
The season opener on Sept. 5, aired on NBC and Peacock (along with other league and NBCUniversal digital platforms), drew 29.2 million cross-platform viewers, a 9% increase from last year’s kickoff.
Nielsen and Adobe Analytics show the TV audience was 24.56 million, while 4.64 million viewers (16% of the total) streamed the game, a 60% rise in streaming from last year. Despite the TV-only viewership slightly dropping from 24.75 million, streaming more than made up for it.
Fox’s national Sunday afternoon game, featuring Tom Brady’s debut as a commentator, brought in 23.93 million TV viewers. Monday Night Football (20.5 million on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and streaming) and Sunday Night Football (20 million on NBC, 22.8 million with streaming) both surpassed 20 million viewers.
The opening week also introduced a streaming-exclusive game from Brazil, marking the NFL’s first venture into South America. Peacock and local broadcasters for the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers averaged 14 million viewers, nearly doubling the audience for Peacock's last regular-season game, which drew 7.3 million in December 2023.
Week two kicked off with Thursday Night Football on Amazon's Prime Video, where the Buffalo Bills' 31-10 win over the Miami Dolphins attracted 14.96 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Although just below last year's opener of 15.06 million, it was still well above the 2023 average of 11.83 million viewers.
Later in the season, the NFL plans to expand its media reach further with two Christmas Day games streamed on Netflix.
