Fourth Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City Chiefs defend their Super Bowl title, against him … [+]
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After falling levels during the NFL regular season and the first two weeks of the season, the audience for both tournament games grew from last year. This goes well with Super Bowl LV up next.
Postseason NFL: Heading up to the Super Bowl, the three weeks of NFL playoff games are among the top televised programs each season with each game receiving an average of more than 20 million viewers. This season was no different as teams from both conferences played a number of “win or go home” postseason games, earning the right to play in Super Bowl LV on February 7th.
This postseason there was a new wrinkle, in March 2020 the NFL announced that they were expanding the number of playoff teams from 12 to 14. As a result, the team with the seventh best record in the every conference now deserves the postseason. Going forward, the second seed team did not get a blessing during the opening of the playoffs and instead played the lowest seed team (seventh). As a result, only the team with the highest seeds in both conferences received a blessing. Going up to the Super Bowl there are now twelve postseason games instead of ten.
Wildcard Weekend: With the extended playoff format, six NFL games were played at the post’s opening wild card weekend instead of four. A “tripleheader” of matches was played on Saturday and Sunday giving football fans around 22 hours of live coverage over the weekend.
Saturday: One of the added games was played early Saturday afternoon (Buffalo vs Indianapolis) on CBS. The game posted an average audience of 20.1 million viewers, the lowest of the six wild card games and the smallest wild card tournament seen since 2003. The tournament was on Saturday afternoon. on Fox (Los Angeles Rams vs Seattle), average. an audience of 24.6 million viewers. Despite being the highest-rated game on the day, it was a 6% drop from 26.3 million last year in the same period. Saturday’s prime-time match (Tampa Bay vs. Washington) on NBC averaged 21.4 million viewers, a big drop (-32%) from last season’s main tournament of 31.4 million.
Sunday: The game early Sunday afternoon (Baltimore vs. Tennessee) on ABC / ESPN / Freeform / ESPN2 averaged 24.8 million viewers, a fall of 18% from last year’s game in the same period. The late afternoon game (New Orleans vs Chicago) was the wildest card game of the weekend with an average of 30.7 million viewers. The game was co-broadcast on CBS and Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon had an average of 2.1 million viewers, making it the most watched program on the cable network in four years Nick’s telecast came with information aimed at children, fun graphics, guest reporters and he waited on Twitter throughout the game. Plus, this was the wildest Sunday card game that was watched on CBS in seven years. However, compared to last year, rates fell by 13%. The sixth match was broadcast during prime time (another addition from last year), on NBC between two North AFC rivals (Cleveland vs Pittsburgh). The tournament, the second highest game of the weekend, had 26.0 million spectators.
The six wild card games had an average of 24.3 million viewers, a big increase from the regular NFL season (15.4 million) but, much lower than the average audience from last year’s four wild card games of 30.7 million. In addition, the average audience of the four games broadcast in the same times as last year was 25.2 million viewers, a decline of 18%. The average four games was 25.2 million the lowest since 2014. All, the average viewer of the six games in 2021 was 142.5 million, an increase of 20% compared to 122.8 million for all four games in January 2020.
Regional Visit: As in previous years, there were four games in the regional round of the playoffs, with two on Saturday and two on Sunday. As in previous years the Saturday games delivered a smaller audience than the Sunday games.
Saturday: The late Saturday afternoon game (Los Angeles Rams vs Green Bay) on Fox averaged 26.5 million viewers, a 10% decline from last afternoon that averaged 29.3 million. Saturday’s first-ever game (Buffalo vs. Baltimore) on NBC averaged 26.2 million viewers, the lowest audience of the four weekend tournaments and an 11% decline from last year. Nonetheless, Saturday night’s program was the highest rated on the network in four years. By comparison, the following weekend the four networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) together had only an average of seven million viewers.
Sunday: Both Sunday games averaged over 30 million viewers, the top two TV shows since the Super Bowl in February last year. Nevertheless, audience delivery for both games was lower last year. The early game (Kansas City vs. Cleveland) averaged 34.3 million viewers on CBS, a year-over-year decline of 3%. The late game between NFC South Tampa Bay rivals and New Orleans was a tent matchup at the weekend. The game also featured the two oldest NFL players this season, quarterbacks Tom Brady (age 43) and Drew Brees (age 42). While the game had an average of 36.4 million viewers on Fox, making it the most watched game of the weekend, it was a 5% drop from last year.
In total, the four regional round matches averaged 30.6 million viewers, a decline of 7% from last season (32.8 million viewers).
Conference Champions Games: After the Super Bowl, the two conference games will sit just behind the Super Bowl as the top TV programs of all time.
In the NFC tournament game Tampa Bay vs Green Bay was another main pavilion featuring future Hall of Fame quarterbacks (Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers). This year the NFC game aired on the early window and Fox had an average viewer of 44.8 million viewers. This was a 5% increase from last year’s NFC title game that started later in the day.
The AFC tournament game featured two quarterfinals younger, Patrick Mahomes II of Kansas City and Josh Allen of Buffalo, both under the age of 26. There were 41.9 million viewers in the late window game on CBS, a 2% increase from last year’s competition. Both games had an average digital audience of 1.5 million (44.5 million), an overall increase of 3% from a year ago.
The delivery of both title games is encouraging, 2020-21 has been tough for major sporting events. The standards for the World Series, NBA finals and college football national championship game reached low levels and other popular TV sports reported a sharp decline in viewership. An inspiring Super Bowl level for TV sports will run into 2021.