The changes to Nielsen methodology in the new Big Data era is paying big dividends for the NFL. And ESPN’s Monday Night Football is the latest beneficiary.
Week 1 saw huge ratings numbers across the spectrum for all of the NFL’s broadcast partners. NBC’s Thursday night season opener between the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys earned 28.3 million viewers with a weather delay that brought numbers down, good enough for the second highest opener ever.
On Friday, YouTube saw 16.2 million viewers domestically and 17.3 million globally for the Chiefs-Chargers game in Brazil, an increase over the 14.2 million that watched the corresponding fixture on Peacock in 2024.
Then on Sunday, both CBS and Fox had plenty to boast about with their Week 1 numbers. This year, things were switched up with CBS having a single national late afternoon window instead of the dual Fox and CBS 4:25 p.m. ET games we have seen in years past. The big-time Packers-Lions matchup saw CBS draw 23.8 million viewers. Both that game and overall numbers were the best for the network since 1998. Over on Fox, their single-header Week 1 coverage was the best for either network since 2015. NBC saw 24.7 million tune in for Bills-Ravens for its best Sunday Night Football opener in three years, although unfortunately it sounds like millions of viewers tuned out before Josh Allen and company led an epic comeback.
ESPN was never going to be left out of the party with Monday Night Football. And to nobody’s surprise, the Vikings’ out-of-nowhere comeback over the Bears at Soldier Field was another big ratings winner.
An average of 22.1 million viewers watched the inaugural MNF game of the 2025 season. It was ESPN’s second most-watched season debut since gaining the package in 2006. It was also an 8% increase over last season.
Football ratings in the NFL and college football are increasing thanks to Nielsen’s more comprehensive approach to calculating viewership numbers. The new approach combines Nielsen’s traditional panel measurement with data from millions of set-top boxes and smart TVs. It was believed that this new era would produce bigger numbers for fall football, and those predictions have turned out to be true. Every other sports league can only hope they will reap similar rewards as well.