An expanded Wild Card weekend led to lower average viewership for the NFL, but the move from four games to six meant overall consumption increased. The games this past weekend across Fox, NBC, CBS, Nickelodeon, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and Freeform averaged around 24.2 million viewers. Last year, four games across ABC, ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS averaged 30.5 million viewers. However, there were over 28 billion minutes consumed of NFL Wild Card action in '21, up 16% from the same weekend last season.
Bears-Saints in the late Sunday afternoon window led the way with 30.7 million viewers across CBS and Nickelodeon, down from 35.1 million for Seahawks-Eagles on NBC in the same window last year. Bears-Saints does mark CBS’ best Sunday Wild Card in seven years. The 2.1 million viewers for Nickelodeon’s youth-centered telecast of the game marks the network’s most-watched program in nearly four years and is up 245% vs. the network’s comparable window a year ago.
The Browns’ upset of the Steelers was No. 2 for the weekend with 24.8 million (26 million with streaming). There was no primetime Wild Card game in previous years. The NBC audience marks TV’s most-watched primetime show since the Super Bowl in '20. Meanwhile, NBC averaged 21.4 million viewers for Buccaneers-WFT on Saturday night, down from 31.4 million for Titans-Patriots last year. Bucs-WFT is the most-watched Saturday primetime show on any network since the Titans-Ravens '19 AFC Divisional Playoff on CBS.
The Ravens-Titans megacast on ESPN, ABC, ESPN2 and Freeform averaged 24.8 million. That is the least-watched 1pm Sunday Wild Card since Ravens-Dolphins in 2013. It was the first time ESPN/ABC did not have the 4pm Saturday window since it got a playoff game in 2015. Last season, ESPN/ABC averaged 26.3 million for Texans-Bills. While down from last season, the megacast audience is higher than the 22.8 million that ESPN/ABC drew for Colts-Texans in 2019 and the 22.2 million it drew for Titans-Chiefs in 2018.
Fox drew 24 million viewers for Rams-Seahawks on Saturday afternoon. Earlier on Saturday, Colts-Bills averaged 20.1 million on CBS, which is the lowest audience for any WC game in at least 15 years.
