A Sunday Night Football host talking among other hosts.
Sports

At Season Midpoint, NBC Sunday Night Football Viewership Highest Since 2015

Key Takeaways

Sunday Night Football viewership is up 8% from last year, and Football Night in America is up 5% from 2017.
Rodgers vs. Brady on NBC Sunday Night Football delivered the largest week 9 Sunday Night Football audience ever with more than 24 million viewers.
NBC Sports Digital’s Sunday Night Football Average Minute Audience (AMA) for the season is up 81% from 2017.

Stamford, CT

At the midway point of the NFL season, NBC Sunday Night Football, primetime TV’s #1 show for a history-making seven consecutive years, once again tops primetime television and is averaging a Total Audience Delivery of 19.7 million viewers – up 8% from last year at this point (18.3 million) and pacing for SNF’s best season since the record-setting 2015.

“I’ll watch that,” said basketball legend Michael Jordan in NBC Sports’ spot promoting Aaron Rodgers and the Packers against Tom Brady and the Patriots on NBC Sunday Night Football this past weekend. Jordan wasn’t the only one, as New England’s 31-17 victory over Green Bay delivered a huge audience and boosted NBC Sunday Night Football to its highest midseason viewership in three years.

This past Sunday night, Packers-Patriots on NBC registered a Total Audience Delivery average of 24.1 million viewers – ranking as the most-watched Week 9 game in the 13-year history of SNF on NBC, and a 66% jump from last year’s Week 9 game (Raiders-Dolphins, 14.5 million), according to official national live + same day data released by Nielsen, and digital data from Adobe Analytics.

“With legendary matchups like Rodgers vs. Brady, exciting new players, high-scoring offenses, and compelling games, the NFL continues to deliver content and audiences unmatched by any property, year after year,” said Mark Lazarus, Chairman of NBC Broadcasting and Sports. “We’re looking forward to the second half of our schedule, which features many crucial divisional matchups, the Thanksgiving night game, plus the Week 17 flex game. We expect SNF to finish atop the primetime rankings yet again.”

Additional NBC Sunday Night Football metrics:

  • With an average of 23.7 million NBC-TV viewers for Packers-Patriots, this past weekend’s SNF game delivered the largest primetime audience on any network since the Academy Awards in March and the most-watched NFL telecast on any network this season.
  • NBC Sunday Night Football accounts for the only primetime shows (four games) on any network this fall to reach the 20 million viewer mark.
  • Seven of the past eight NBC SNF games have delivered larger audiences than the comparable game in 2017, with Sunday’s game ranking as the most-watched NFL primetime game on any network since Week 1 of 2017 (Giants-Cowboys on SNF).
  • Football Night in America, the most-watched weekly studio show in sports, delivered 8.7 million viewers on Sunday night -- the best Week 9 delivery for FNIA since 2015 and up 17% from last year. For the season, FNIA is averaging 7.2 million viewers – up 5% from the comparable 7:30-8:15 p.m. ET time window through last year at this point.
  • The Average Minute Audience (AMA) for Sunday night’s live stream via NBC Sports Digital and NFL Digital platforms was 400,000 viewers – more than tripling last year’s Week 9 game (125,000 for Raiders-Dolphins). Fans consumed a record 85.3 million live streaming minutes across 1.8 million unique devices, up 207% and 213%, respectively, from last year’s Week 9 game. For the season, NBC Sports Digital’s AMA of 356,000 viewers is up 81% from last year through Week 9 (197,000).
  • Sunday’s game (8:24 p.m.-11:25 p.m. ET) registered a national TV household rating of 13.7/25.

On Monday, the NFL announced that the Nov. 18 game between the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings -- the respective first- and second-place teams in the NFC North – has been flexed into primetime on Sunday Night Football.

Read the full release here.