NFL records highest viewership since 2015

The NFL has been king in America for awhile now, and that point was only driven home more throughout the 2023 season.

According to Austin Karp of The Sports Business Journal, the league accomplished their highest average viewership for games since 2015, with regular season games up 7% for an average of 17.9 million viewers this season.

“The NFL for the 2023 regular season had its best average viewership for games since 2015 — and tied with 2010 for the second-best season on record,” Karp wrote. “Regular-season games averaged 17.9 million viewers this season, up 7% from last year, and the best figure since the league averaged 18.1 million in 2015 (the all-time record).

“The NFL saw gains across all key demos (in the 4-10% range), including its best female viewership on record (dating back to 2000). Among adults 18-34, the league had its best season since 2019. Male viewership was up 6% and female viewership was up 9%.”

As you can see, that’s wildly impressive for the NFL. In a day and age where viewership for many different television programs is down due to streaming and other various reasons, the NFL continues to rake in the attention of millions and millions.

Additionally, Karp included some interesting statistics regarding the break down of how each individual channel fared in 2023, with NBC and Sunday Night Football leading the charge this season.

“NBC again had the most-watched overall package, averaging 21.4 million viewers — the network’s best figure for the package since 2015,” Karp reported. “CBS recorded its best season since returning as an NFL media partner in 1998, averaging 19.3 million for all its games. The previous best for CBS was 19.1 million in 2015. For the first time in many years, CBS had the NFL’s most-watched window, averaging 24.6 million viewers for the Sunday 4:30pm ET telecasts (national windows). Fox averaged 19 million viewers for its games this season, down just 2% from last year. The network’s number was impacted by blowouts in seven of 10 national windows. Still, Fox was up 2% for its national window from 2022.

“ESPN averaged 17.4 million viewers this season, which is the best figure for the Monday Night Football package since ABC in 2000. The ESPN numbers saw a big uptick by having ABC simulcasts for almost every MNF game this season. ESPN numbers also include ManningCast numbers for select games on ESPN2. MNF is up 29% from last season.”

Continuing, Karp mentioned that Amazon’s Thursday Night Football was also up 29% from last season, a positive sign for live sports on streaming networks, as rumors swirl of Amazon potentially picking up WWE’s Monday Night Raw.

Regardless, it’s evident the NFL’s popularity is continuing to soar, and it’ll continue to be the king of live television for the foreseeable future.