#NFL ratings jump 10% to highest in six years

The National Football League notched its best TV ratings in six years during the 2021-2022 season, boosted by an extra week of games and a slew of nail-biting finishes.

The league’s 272 regular-season games averaged 17.1 million viewers, up 10% over the 2020-2021 season, yielding its best numbers since 2015, according to Nielsen data.

The regular season, which was extended to 17 games from 16 in previous years, was full of close games and few blowouts. According to the NFL, 64% of all games this season were within one score in the fourth quarter.

Nielsen said that NFL games ranked in the top 16 and accounted for 91 of the top 100 telecasts on TV during the season. The Dallas Cowboys propped up ratings, as the team was involved in five of the 10 most-watched games, including the Thanksgiving Day game against the Las Vegas Raiders, which averaged a whopping 40.8 million viewers.

That was the most-watched regular-season game on any network in 31 years and one of only two since 1988 to average at least 40 million, the ratings agency said.

TV rights holders got a much needed boost, following a sluggish year with paltry advertising and viewership. NBC’s regular-season package of mostly Sunday night games averaged 19.3 million viewers across TV and digital platforms, up 11% from the previous season.

Fox’s Sunday afternoon NFL national and regional coverage averaged 18.6 million viewers, up 2 percent over last season. The national games on Fox average 23.1 million viewers, while ViacomCBS’ CBS averaged 18 million viewers, marking a 9 percent increase.

Meanwhile Disney’s ESPN, which has Monday Night Football rights, averaged 14.2 million viewers, up 16 percent over last season. Thursday night games, which were carried by Fox and the NFL Network and are streamed on Amazon Prime, reeled in an average of 16.4 million viewers, notching a gain of 16 percent.

Next season, Amazon will become the exclusive media outlet for the majority of Thursday games.

The rebound follows a year marked by the coronavirus pandemic, which lead to empty stadiums and a slew of rescheduled games as players got sick with the virus. The year before that was a presidential election season, posing tough competition from cable news networks.

The pandemic has also hit this season as the highly contagious Omicron variant began ripping across the country. Many players have missed games and some games have been rescheduled late in the season. Even so, the NFL has been able to limit COVID-19 disruptions.