NFL regular season hits highest per-game viewership in 36 years

On average, each game of the 2025 NFL regular season drew 18.7 million viewers, the second most in history and the highest since 1989.

The viewership average included numbers from TV and digital platforms and represented a 10% increase from 2024, NFL Media said. NFL games also made up 89 of the top 100 TV programs of 2025.

The highest average per-game viewership for the regular season occurred 36 years ago at 19 million — though there were four fewer teams and each played 16 games instead of 17. Season viewership records date back to only 1988, according to the Sports Business Journal.

The 2025 season was the first to measure viewership using the new Nielsen Big Data + Panel metric, which combines its traditional panel of participating households with data from 75 million devices across 45 million U.S. households.

The league and cable providers anticipated a boost in ratings numbers as a result of the new metric and Nielsen’s improved methods for measuring viewership outside of homes.

“We want the most accurate measurement possible, and we want all the viewers of the league, but really across the board [in media], to be captured in measurement. So we view [Big Data + Panel] as a good step in that direction,” NFL Vice President of Media Analytics and Reporting Adriane Berman told Front Office Sports in September.

CBS led the various NFL weekly rights holders with an average of 21.52 million viewers, an 11% increase from 2024 and its best regular season on record.

Fox, meanwhile, had an average of 19.6 million viewers, a rise of 6% from 2024 and the highest average the network had since 2015.

CBS benefited from having three of the top five regular-season games by viewership, all three of which featured the Kansas City Chiefs. 

The Chiefs’ game against the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving netted 57.23 million viewers, the most-watched regular-season game in league history.

Kansas City’s road game against the Buffalo Bills brought in 30.84 million viewers, and the Chiefs’ visit to Denver drew almost 29 million viewers, the fourth and fifth-highest-rated games, according to NFL Media.

Fox had the Nos. 2 and 3 rated games: the Thanksgiving matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas, which drew 47.7 million viewers, and the Super Bowl rematch between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City, which had 33.8 million viewers.

On ESPN, the “Monday Night Football” broadcasts had an average of 15.8 million viewers, a 9% increase from 2024 and the second-highest average for the cable sports network behind the 2023 NFL season. 

For NBC, “Sunday Night Football” brought in an average of 23.5 million viewers across the TV network and its associated streaming platform Peacock, the highest average in its history and a 9% year-over-year increase. The weekly games continued their 15-year streak of being the top show in prime time.

Amazon Prime Video also saw record numbers for “Thursday Night Football,” bringing in an average of 15.33 million viewers, an increase of 16% from 2024 and the highest viewership average for the NFL’s Thursday night games.