The NFL kicked off the 2022 season with a huge TV audience, which is not surprising, but not as big as it was a year ago.
The Buffalo Bills’ 31-10 victory over defending Super Bowl champions Los Angeles Rams is expected to draw 21 million viewers across NBC, Peacock and NFL digital properties. That would decrease by 20% from last year’s opening, which hit a six-year high of 26.4 million viewers across all platforms.
Nielsen’s final ratings for a portion of NBC’s audience, which will make up the vast majority of the total, are expected to be released Monday morning (delayed because Nielsen enters the Labor Day holiday). Last year’s opening game had 24.81 million viewers on the broadcast network.
An uneven score (the most lopsided opening game in nine years) and news coverage of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II’s death on many other networks on Thursday may have helped to lower the NFL’s ratings from last year. . The 2021 game also featured two of the league’s biggest draws at the Dallas Cowboys and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, led by Tom Brady.
Among cable news channels, Fox News had the highest ratings (2.28 million viewers) at 2 pm ET when the Queen’s death was announced. CNN averaged 1.8 million viewers and MSNBC 1.19 million at that time. The combined 5.27 million viewers for the three editions were up 53% from the same period on Wednesday.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
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