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The Josh Allen-Patrick Mahomes rivalry is the gift that keeps on giving for the NFL and its TV partners, as Sunday night’s heart-stopping AFC Divisional Round playoff game averaged 50.4 million viewers on CBS.
Per Nielsen data, this marks the highest all-time turnout for an NFL game outside the gold standard of the Super Bowl and conference championship games. The previous high-water mark for a Divisional Round broadcast was notched by Fox on Jan. 15, 2017, when Aaron Rodgers led the Packers to a 34-31 victory over the Cowboys in front of a crowd of 48.5 million viewers.
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By way of comparison, the average broadcast primetime show averages 3.06 million viewers per episode. In what’s shaping up to be the most compelling pairing of quarterbacks since Tom Brady and Peyton Manning went at it between 2001 and 2015, the latest installment of Allen vs. Mahomes also buried the World Series and NBA Finals, while nearly doubling the deliveries of the State of the Union Address.
Sunday’s game, which saw the Chiefs eke out a 27-24 win over the Bills, was only the latest in a series of nail-biters featuring the two quarterbacks. To date, Kansas City has prevailed in all three of its postseason outings against Buffalo, and the audience has swelled as the animosity between the teams has heated up. In 2021, the Chiefs prevailed in the AFC Championship game, a 38-24 effort that scared up 41.8 million viewers, while the following season’s Divisional Round overtime win averaged 42.7 million.
The CBS broadcast peaked at 56.3 million viewers, or just around the time Bills kicker Tyler Bass pulled a Scott Norwood, sending what would have been a game-tying 44-yard field goal wide right with 1:44 to play. There were five lead changes in the game.
As has been the case since Nielsen added out-of-home deliveries to its national TV sample in 2020, it’s worth noting that today’s ratings are inflated by the impressions earned in bars, restaurants and other public…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/bills-chiefs-divisional-round-sets-190719914.html
Author : Sportico
Publish date : 2024-01-23 19:07:19
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