To borrow a football metaphor, the NFL has effectively been kicking with a “k-ball” this season, adding out-of-home and streaming viewership to its linear ratings. Even so, the league continues to split the uprights, extending its decades of dominance.
Heading into a blockbuster four-game stretch over Thanksgiving and Black Friday, average viewership is up 6% from a year ago with about 17.7M people tuning in through Week 11, according to Nielsen‘s Big Data + Panel measurements. And to be fair, the new ratings system isn’t just for the NFL. It’s a new set of standards introduced by Nielsen in an effort to more accurately capture contemporary tune-in, with viewing at bars, restaurants and the like, plus streaming, rolled into the total.
Nielsen began rolling out its Big Data + Panel measurement system on an opt-in basis last year. This marks the first TV season where it is the primary data being used to report audience data across the board, so Nielsen previously advised to expect between a 3% to 4% average viewership lift to reflect the difference. That’s because, in addition to the traditional panel data from about 40,000 homes that Nielsen has always used to project in-home viewing, Big Data + Panel also combines that with new data from over 75 million set-top boxes and internet-connected smart TVs in more than 45 million homes to provide a more comprehensive picture of the TV viewing landscape.
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That, along with the addition of out-of-home viewing that was introduced in February, and it’s obvious why the numbers were going to look a little juiced.
But, the NFL has been surpassing even those expectations, setting viewership records right out of the gate this season. To date, the most-watched game this regular season has been the Week 2 Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl rematch, which averaged 33.8 million viewers, marking one of the most-watched early season games ever.
Another early season stunner was the Cowboys-Eagles kickoff game with 28.3 million viewers, the second most-watched kickoff game on record. It’s actually behind only last year’s 29.2 million viewers for Ravens-Chiefs, a game that came down to the final play.
Chiefs-Bills in Week 9 managed 30.9 million, making it the only other game this season so far to surpass 30 million.
As Thanksgiving approached, the momentum has only gotten stronger. Last week, led by the Chiefs win in overtime versus the Colts, CBS posted the most-watched November singleheader in more than 30 years with 24 million viewers. Fox followed that lead with 27.8 million for the Cowboys’ win over the Eagles, up 10% versus last year.
Although it has long been a gargantuan media force, the NFL this year has also benefited significantly from closer games. When Week 8’s average margin of victory ballooned to 19 points, it served as a reminder that the competition the rest of the time has been a lot tighter. So far, 12 games have gone to overtime, compared with 16 in the entire 2024 season. The longtime hierarchy of playoff teams is also being reordered, with the struggles of former bluebloods like the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens has introduced new excitement. (The must-see drama of the once-dynastic Chiefs fighting for their playoff lives is one reason their game against the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving is expected to set an NFL regular season record. Netflix has Kansas City taking on the Pittsburgh Steelers on Christmas.)
Placekickers, now legally allowed to use specially conditioned “k-balls” instead of regular game balls, have made 50-plus-yard field goals more makeable. Cam Little of the Jacksonville Jaguars set the NFL record this month with a 68-yarder. That extended range, combined with this year’s revised dynamic kickoff rules, requires teams to go only about 20 yards before they are able to tie or win games in the final seconds.
Thursday Night Football, ridiculed for years for diluting the caliber of play, has seen its best numbers yet since becoming an Amazon Prime Video exclusive. Season-to-date, it is averaging 14.78 million viewers, up +12% over last year’s full-season average of 13.2 million and an eye-popping 54% over 2022 levels.
Since Big Data + Panel measurements are delayed, the full Week 12 picture isn’t quite available yet. Still, it’s clear that the first 12 weeks of the season have primed the pump quite nicely for a gargantuan Thanksgiving weekend. The long holiday weekend typically draws some of the largest NFL audiences of the regular season, and this year will likely be no exception.
The current Thanksgiving Day record holder is the 2022 late-afternoon game between the Cowboys and the Giants, which managed 42 million viewers. Last year’s identical matchup slipped to 38.8 million viewers, which is still a monster showing, but considering the league was within spitting distance of that number two weeks into the season, the expectation is that the Chiefs-Cowboys will see an uptick, at the very least.
Aside from dominating the TV landscape, accounting for more than 90 of Nielsen’s top 100 shows, the NFL is also a crucial way for companies to attract streaming subscribers. Along with Amazon, Netflix and YouTube leaning in, traditional media companies invested in streaming also are showcasing their league rights. Paramount+ averaged 117,000 daily signups during the 2023 and 2024 seasons, a 41% higher rate of acquisition than during the off-season, according to a recent report by research firm Antenna. Peacock averaged 76,000 daily sign-ups during the ’23 and ’24 seasons, up 24% over the off-season (a number skewed by the Paris Summer Olympics in 2024).
YouTube’s multi-billion-dollar acquisition of NFL Sunday Ticket (which allows access to all out-of-market games) in 2024 proved to be rocket fuel for the company’s pay-TV bundle, YouTube TV. The service, now past 10 million subscribers, has jousted with Disney, NBCUniversal and many other large programmers this year, in part because of the strong foundation provided by the NFL. As a package, Sunday Ticket has reached 2.1 million subscribers, Antenna said, with sign-ups jumping 37% in the third quarter of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. Discount offers are generally the reason. While YouTube offers Sunday Ticket as a stand-alone, it costs less when combined with a YouTube TV subscription.
“I sort of describe them as the modern manifestation of what DirecTV used to be for sports fans,” Burke Magnus, president of content at ESPN, said of YouTube TV this week on the podcast SI Media with Jimmy Traina. “The parallel there is obviously Sunday Ticket,” which DirecTV launched in 1994 and operated for 29 years. ESPN, ABC and other Disney networks went dark for 15 days on YouTube TV amid a carriage dispute. The blackout dealt an immediate blow to Monday Night Football, which dropped more than 20%.
Along with Sunday Ticket, the league has been pushing mobile viewing via its NFL+ service, which Antenna pegs at 3 million subscribers. Subscriber growth surged 25% in the third quarter compared with year-ago levels.
Mobile was also a key reason for an expanded deal with YouTube, including the free global platform’s first live game last September. “Watch-with” experiences with influencers and other activations, including on YouTube Shorts, are an area of focus.
Seema Shah, VP of Research and Insights at Sensor Tower, recently sized up shifting trends in NFL media consumption in a report co-produced with AppsFlyer. It looked at newer elements like gambling and fantasy, which make the overall viewership picture more complicated. “What is competing for people’s attention?” she asked in an interview with Deadline. “It’s streaming vs. short-form vs. social. We look closely at that, and streaming is losing share.”
The mobile sports ecosystem is “in transition,” the report says. “Sports betting is stabilizing as the market matures, while fantasy continues to rake in usership through social and gamified engagement.”