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Sports

NBC Sports, Peacock Kick Off NFL Season with Milestone Audience

Key Takeaways

The best viewership in 6 years for NBC Sports’ two-game NFL Kickoff Weekend across NBC, Peacock and NFL digital Properties.
The NBC NFL Kickoff Weekend games are the 2 most-watched primetime shows since ‘Super Gold Sunday’ in February on NBC and Peacock.
Led by Peacock, the Bills-Rams NFL kickoff game is the most-streamed NBC NFL game on record, excluding Super Bowl LVI.

Stamford, CT

NBC’s Sunday Night Football, primetime’s #1 show for an unprecedented 11 consecutive years, returned last night and continued to dominate the media landscape, registering a Total Audience Delivery (TAD) average of approximately 25.1 million viewers — the largest audience for NBC’s Sunday night opener since 2015.

The 25.1 million viewers, based on preliminary data, across NBC TV, Peacock, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL Digital platforms tops last year’s SNF opener by 35% (Bears-Rams, 18.6 million) and is the most watched Sunday night opener in seven years (Giants-Cowboys, 26.9 million, 9/13/15).

Coupled with last Thursday’s Buffalo Bills-Los Angeles Rams NFL Kickoff Game, NBC Sports posted its largest two-game NFL Kickoff Weekend audience since 2016 with a TAD average of 23.4 million viewers.

Among additional records and milestones:

  • The Bills’ 31-10 victory over the Rams averaged a TAD of 21.7 million viewers – marking the fourth consecutive NFL Kickoff Game to top 21 million viewers.
  • The two games rank as TV’s two most-watched primetime shows since NBC Sports’ historic “Super Gold Sunday” on February 13 with Super Bowl LVI followed by live Winter Olympics coverage.
  • Led by Peacock, the Thursday night opener is the most-streamed NBC NFL game on record (excluding Super Bowl LVI). The game registered an Average Minute Audience of 1.74 million viewers across Peacock, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL Digital Properties.
  • Last night’s game delivered an AMA of 1.65 million viewers – NBC Sports’ most-streamed Sunday night NFL game on record. Through two games, NBC Sports’ AMA of 1.7 million viewers is up 34% from last year.
  • Last night’s game (8:23 p.m.-11:08 p.m. ET) registered a national TV household rating of 12.3/31 – up 28% from last year’s Sunday night opener (9.6/23).
  • Viewership figures are based upon data from Nielsen (preliminary data for SNF) and Adobe Analytics. Official national data for NBC on Sunday will be available tomorrow.