NBC’s Lions Vs. Chiefs Draws Largest NFL Audience Week 1, ABC’s ‘Monday Night Football’ Sees Lift After Jets Lose Aaron Rodgers
deadline.comThe NFL regular season is finally back to breathe some life into linear television. Audiences were raring to go for the Thursday night kickoff game, delivering a huge audience for NBC’s telecast of the Detroit Lions victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.
The game averaged 27.5M viewers to rank as the largest NFL kickoff game audience since 2015, up 24% over last year. The network followed it up with another strong audience for Sunday night’s matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants.
That Sunday Night Football broadcast drew 21.8M viewers, which is down a few million from last year’s audience of around 24M.
Still, it was a successful opening weekend for NBC, which touted a 7% overall lift in viewership across its two-game kickoff weekend versus last year.
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