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Despite all the mindshare-gobbling distractions of an election year and the ongoing erosion of TV usage, the NFL is on pace to put up its strongest ratings since 2015. And while the league’s stranglehold over our screens shows no sign of slackening, the season-long viewership boost may seem like a bit of a head-scratcher, as it coincides with year-over-year declines in the big primetime windows.
While the NFL’s deliveries aren’t significantly higher than they were through Week 14 of the 2023 campaign—to date, the league is averaging 18.1 million impressions per game, good for a 2% lift from 17.9 million—the current nine-year high is nothing to sneeze at, given that overall TV usage has dropped 7% versus the analogous period last fall. As it happens, the drop in tube time coincides with similar linear losses in the NFL’s marquee after-dark windows.
Per Sportico’s analysis of the Nielsen live-plus-same-day ratings data, Disney’s Monday Night Football package is weathering a 7% drop in TV deliveries, as its average draw of 14.7 million viewers is off last season’s pace by some 1.1 million viewers per telecast.
Aside from the aforementioned shrinkage in TV consumption, the MNF declines largely can be attributed to a lighter broadcast presence—last year at this time, 14 games were either simulcast or aired as standalone outings on the big-reach ABC network, whereas this season’s count is at 10—and one very gnarly single-game comp. In Week 11 of 2023, the Super Bowl LVII rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs scared up just shy of 29 million viewers across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, making it the most-watched installment of MNF in 27 years. This season’s comparable Texans-Cowboys game delivered 12 million fewer viewers.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football is facing similar headwinds, with TV deliveries averaging 19.3 million viewers per broadcast, which works out to a 5% dip. But the vanilla TV numbers don’t account for the gains made on the streaming…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-ratings-growth-boosted-streaming-211359615.html
Author : Sportico
Publish date : 2024-12-13 21:13:00
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