The NFL’s wild-card weekend viewership dropped significantly compared to last year, with streaming games showing mixed results.
Baltimore: So, the NFL’s wild-card round just wrapped up, and it wasn’t the best news for viewership. They averaged about 28.3 million viewers, which is a 9.3% drop from last year. Ouch!
It seems like folks are tuning in a bit less than before. The league and Nielsen reported that the six games this year pulled in fewer viewers than the 31.2 million from last year. The Saturday games held steady, but Sunday and Monday? Not so much.
One interesting thing is how people are getting used to watching games on streaming services. For instance, Baltimore’s win over Pittsburgh on Amazon Prime Video hit a record 22.07 million viewers. That’s the most ever for a game on Prime!
But even that was a bit of a drop from last year’s average on Peacock. The most-watched game was Philadelphia beating Green Bay, which had 35.6 million viewers. Still, that was down 11% from a similar game last year.
Washington’s nail-biter against Tampa Bay averaged 26.2 million, down 19% from last year’s Rams-Lions game. Houston’s game was pretty close to last year’s numbers, but Buffalo’s blowout matched last year’s Steelers-Bills game audience.
Overall, the league averaged 17.5 million during the regular season, which is still pretty solid but down 2% from last year. Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football did see an 11% increase, but Monday Night Football took a hit with a 14% drop.