The NFL keeps motoring along.
I’ve written ledes like this every year for the past decade. This lede was accurate after Spygate, Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson. It didn’t change after player arrests, concussion settlements or replacement referees. So far this year, the Deflategate drama appears to have only increased fan interest.
One quarter of the way through the regular season, all of the NFL’s prime-time packages are up over last year. At a time when viewers are leaving television for digital video, NFL programming continues to defy gravity.
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Viewership for “Thursday Night Football” has shot up 20 percent this season.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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It’s not just that the prime-time packages are up over last year. Television’s most popular programming is posting the biggest audience gains compared to every other genre. The numbers are almost unbelievable.
The wildest increase is on Thursday nights where CBS and NFL Network’s audience is up an incredible 20 percent from last year. The two networks that simulcast the Thursday night game are averaging a combined 19.29 million viewers for its three “Thursday Night Football” telecasts, up from the 16.08 million viewer average to the same point last year.
The NFL is now in its 10th season of regularly scheduling Thursday night games, and it seems that U.S. audiences have become used to having football on that night.
| Network package |
No. of viewers |
% change |
| NBC “Sunday Night Football” |
25.31M |
+10% |
| CBS/NFL Network “Thursday Night Football” |
19.29M |
+20% |
| ESPN “Monday Night Football” |
13.62M |
+0.4% |
Source: SportsBusiness Daily review of Nielsen numbers.
These early audiences are important to the league, which will be negotiating a long-term “Thursday Night Football” deal after this season. Last season’s Thursday night slate was marked by several early season blowouts, which kept viewership down. This season has been different: Two of the three games were decided in the fourth quarter and all three involved division rivals, a recipe for big ratings. Before the season, it appeared that the NFL put a stronger schedule on Thursday night and that surely has generated viewer interest. After all, the NFL has a big financial incentive to make the Thursday schedule as strong as possible.
League and network sources said that they expect a long-term deal for Thursday night to be struck early next year to give the winning bidder enough time to sell advertising and create a marketing campaign. CBS currently is paying $300 million for this year. If viewership remains 20 percent over last year’s, the NFL should expect to bring in much more in the next deal.
Meanwhile, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” is well on its way to claiming its fifth prime-time crown in a row. NBC is pulling in the NFL’s biggest prime-time audience in more than two decades, averaging 25.31 million viewers for the NFL Kickoff and four Sunday night games. That mark is up 10 percent from last year and is the NFL’s highest prime-time viewership since ABC averaged 26.3 million in 1993 for “Monday Night Football.”
The NFL’s cable package is not seeing such wild gains, as only three of the five games have been blowouts. ESPN is averaging 13.62 million viewers for its five “Monday Night Football” games, up 0.4 percent from the same point last year.
The strong prime-time numbers so far may have come at the expense of the league’s Sunday afternoon slate, which has seen Fox up 2 percent and CBS flat. But even those figures should be considered impressive given the viewership trends in almost every other television genre.
Say it again: The NFL keeps motoring along.
John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.
