Three weeks into the NFL season, it’s clear that marquee teams draw viewers, but good games can draw even more viewers. And while old-school fans accustomed to watching the NFL on broadcast television may complain about the league’s growing presence on streaming services, early results indicate the league has its sights set on a different (read: younger) audience.
The Chiefs’ final-minute win against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday night drew a “total audience” (TV and digital) of 24.8 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, according to NBC Sports. The game is the most-watched of Week 3 of Sunday Night Football, according to NBC, and marked a 20 percent increase over last year’s comparable Steelers-Raiders game. The game was also the fourth-most-watched streamed game ever. (Caveats apply: There haven’t been that many streamed games overall, and ratings have only started to factor in out-of-home viewing in recent years.)
Earlier this week, Prime Video Thursday Night Football It had the bad luck to broadcast the Jets’ destruction of the hapless New England Patriots, and the numbers reflected the (relative) lack of interest. The Jets-Pats game averaged 13.37 million viewers, down 4 percent from last year’s comparable game between the Giants and 49ers.
It’s the second straight game that Prime has lost, after the mediocre game between the Bills and the Dolphins in Week 2. But, As Sports Media Watch points outPrime games are attracting a younger audience: an average age of 47.3, compared to 54.5 for regular NFL broadcasts.
“There’s been some debate about whether Amazon is attracting too many younger viewers,” SMW politely notes, “or that older viewers are simply not as easy to find on Prime.”
More details from Week 3, including the overlapping doubleheaders on Fox, CBS and Monday Night Football, will be released soon.