The National Football League's wild-card playoff round recorded a 13% increase in viewership compared to last year, with an average of 32 million viewers across six games, according to the league and Nielsen.
It was the most-watched opening weekend of the NFL playoffs since the field expanded to 14 teams in the 2020 season, and the most-watched wild-card round since the 2015 campaign. The figure ranks as the fifth highest since average viewer numbers began being tracked in 1988.
Five of the six games saw year-on-year increases, while the sixth was unchanged. The regular season itself averaged 18.7 million viewers per game, up 10% and the second-highest average on record. Some of the increase can be attributed to changes in how viewers are counted; Nielsen began using its Big Data + Panel methodology for all events last September, and now measures out-of-home viewers for all states except Hawaii and Alaska, along with data from smart TVs and set-top boxes.
“It was a great weekend of football all around,” said Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution. “Every year, there's a new set of stars and players emerging.”
Looking ahead to the divisional round, last year's four matchups averaged 37.1 million viewers. The record for the NFL's second playoff weekend is 40 million, set two years ago, led by the Kansas City-Buffalo game which averaged 50.4 million. Fox drew 37.5 million for the Green Bay-San Francisco Saturday night divisional matchup that same year.
This year's schedule includes a short-week debate: the San Francisco 49ers will face the Seattle Seahawks on Saturday night after playing on Sunday, while the Los Angeles Rams and Chicago Bears had a full week after playing on Saturday. “We have teams every week playing from Monday night to Sunday,” Schroeder said. “That’s just the way it breaks every year.”
