The National Football League once again proved its dominance on television during the recently completed regular season, with audience numbers increasing across all major broadcast partners.
From traditional networks to streaming platforms, the NFL confirmed its position as the country’s leading fall entertainment, with ratings rising year over year and several outlets reporting record viewership for marquee matchups.
Every one of the league’s weekly broadcast partners – Amazon, CBS, ESPN, Fox, and NBC – posted growth compared to 2024.
This boost reflects a combination of exciting, high-stakes games, some record-breaking performances on the field, and changes in audience measurement that now capture a more complete picture of viewership, including streaming and out-of-home audiences.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football remains the centerpiece of the NFL’s television success. The show is on track to finish as the highest-rated primetime program on U.S. television for the 15th consecutive year, averaging roughly 23.5 million viewers across NBC and Peacock.
That figure represents a 9% increase from last season. Eight games this season attracted over 25 million viewers, the highest in the show’s history under the expanded Nielsen measurement method.
Streaming also contributed significantly, with Peacock, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL digital platforms averaging 2.5 million viewers, up from 2.2 million in 2024.
Ratings climb across networks and platforms
CBS experienced its most successful NFL season to date, highlighted by a Thanksgiving Day game that drew record-breaking numbers. The network averaged 21.25 million viewers across its regular-season broadcasts, an 11% increase from 2024.
Weeks featuring CBS’s late Sunday afternoon games consistently topped all other television programming, with an average audience of 25.83 million, making it the number-one show on television for the 2025-26 season so far.
Fox also posted strong gains, with its Sunday afternoon games averaging 19.63 million viewers for the season – a 6% year-over-year increase and the network’s highest NFL ratings since 2015.
Amazon’s Thursday Night Football slate reached 15.33 million viewers per game, including local over-the-air broadcasts. The Christmas night matchup drew a Prime Video record of 21.06 million viewers, marking the platform’s most successful TNF season since moving to streaming.
Meanwhile, ESPN and ABC’s Monday Night Football also enjoyed double-digit growth, with averages nearing 16 million viewers.
These gains, alongside those of other networks, were supported by Nielsen’s revised measurement system, which now incorporates big data and out-of-home viewing for the entire country, compared to about 67% previously.
While this methodology partly accounts for the higher totals, there’s no debate about the NFL’s place as the most-watched live sports property in America.
As audiences continue to evolve and streaming becomes increasingly significant, the NFL remains the television powerhouse of the fall, drawing millions of viewers each week and setting new benchmarks across networks and platforms.
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