Ratings Roundup: NFL Divisional Rounds Tackle Highs Across Networks Despite 8% Viewership Decrease By SVG Staff Friday, January 24, 2025 - 9:00 am
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Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press releases and reports around the industry. In this week's edition, College Football Playoffs National Championship scores over 22 million viewers; Unrivaled opening week sees more than 300,000 viewers; and more.
CFP National Championship Tops College Football Postseason Viewership, But Down From 2024 The College Football Playoff National Championship Presented by AT&T delivered 22.1 Million viewers for ESPN, making it the most-watched game of the inaugural expanded CFP. The broadcast across ESPN's networks, which peaked with 26.1 million viewers from 8:30-8:45 p.m. ET, was the most-viewed non-NFL sporting event over the past year. In addition, more than half of P18-49 watching TV were tuned into the Championship Game.
However, Monday's Ohio State's victory over Notre Dame was down 12% compared to a year ago. The combined 22.1 million viewers across the Nielsen-rated ESPN networks marks fifth-least watched national title game since the debut of the CFP predecessor, the Bowl Championship Series, in 1998 (according to SportsMediaWatch).
Despite the decline, the title game edged out the Ohio State-Oregon Rose Bowl on New Year's Day to rank as the most-watched game of the college football season - marking the first time in three years and only the second in five that the title game has taken top honors. This year's game ranks as college football's fourth least-watched title tilt of the last 10 years.
Last year's championship game, in which Michigan overpowered Washington by a 34-13 margin, averaged 25.1 million viewers across the ESPN family of networks.
NFL Divisional Ratings Down 8% From record 2024 The four games during NFL Divisional weekend averaged 36.6 million viewers, the lowest mark for the second round of the playoffs since 2021, per fast-national data via SBJ. The Saturday/Sunday matchups were down 8% from around 40 million viewers last year, which was a record for the NFL.
CBS' Ravens-Bills led the weekend with 42.2 million viewers on Sunday night, down from 50.4 million for Chiefs-Bills last year in the same window. Rams-Eagles on NBC drew 37.8 million on NBC on Sunday afternoon, down 6% from Lions-Bucs in the same window last season. Rams-Eagles was still high enough to be NBC's fourth-best Divisional game on record. It peaked at 47.5 million viewers from 6:00-6:11pm ET. Saturday's Chiefs-Texans game was the only window to see a gain during the Divisional round, drawing drew 32.7 million viewers on ABC/ESPN.
Texans at Chiefs Deliver 33.8 Million Viewers, ESPN's Most-Watched NFL Game Ever ESPN's 2025 NFL Divisional Round presentation delivered a record-breaking audience across ESPN platforms, as the Houston Texans at the Kansas City Chiefs (Saturday, Jan. 18, 4:30 p.m. ET) is the company's most-watched NFL game of all-time. The 33.8 million viewers surpass each NFL on ESPN game, playoffs and regular season, since 1987 (38 seasons), the network's first year airing NFL games. ESPN's Texans at Chiefs Divisional matchup aired on ESPN, ABC, ESPN+, ESPN Deportes, and NFL+.
Additional ESPN's Texans-Chiefs Viewership Highlights:
ESPN Up Year-Over-Year: ESPN bested its own audience from the 2024 Divisional Round (Texans at Ravens) with a 4% audience increase, which was also played on the same day and time slot, and earned a then-record audience of 32.3 million viewers.
NFL's Best Divisional Saturday Afternoon Viewership in 10 Seasons: ESPN's Texans-Chiefs viewership is the NFL's top audience for a Divisional Saturday afternoon (4:30 p.m. kickoff) in 10 seasons, beginning in January 2016 to present, across all networks.
ESPN Delivers Saturday's Top Peak Audience Across All Networks: ESPN's audience peaked at 39.5 million viewers (7-7:15 p.m.), the highest peak audience of any network on Saturday, Jan. 18.
Disney's Most-Watched Non-Super Bowl NFL Game: ESPN's Texans-Chiefs' 33.8 million viewers marks Disney's most-watched NFL game, excluding Super Bowls.
The audience bested all 25 Disney NFL Playoff games in the previous 29 years, including 14 exclusively on ABC (1996-2005), ten available on ABC and ESPN (2016-24) and one solely on ESPN (2015).
The game also surpassed every regular season game exclusively on ABC since 1996.
Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Lisa Salters Era Deliver ESPN's Most-Watched Games
ESPN re-writing its own record books has become a modern trend, as each season of the Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and Lisa Salters era (2022-23, 23-24, and 24-25 seasons) has concluded with ESPN airing its most-watched game of all-time. In that same period, accounting for all games in regular season and postseason, ESPN has aired seven of its eight most-watched games.
ESPN's Most-Watched NFL Games Ever, Dating Back to 1987
Rank
NFL Season
Date
Game
Viewership
Monday Night Football or Playoff Game
1
2024-25
January 18, 2025
Houston Texans at Kansas City Chiefs
33,761,000
Divisional Playoff
2
2023-24
January 20, 2024
Houston Texans at Baltimore Ravens
32,306,000
Divisional Playoff
3
2022-23
January 16, 2023
Dallas Cowboys at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
31,201,000
Wild Card Playoff
4
2023-24
January 15, 2024
Philadelphia Eagles at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
29,135,000
Wild Card Playoff
5
2023-24
November 20, 2023
Philadelphia Eagles at Kansas City Chiefs
28,962,000
Monday Night Football
6
2023-24
December 25, 2023
Baltimore Ravens at San Francisco 49ers
27,616,000
Monday Night Football
7
2019-20
January 4, 2020
Buffalo Bills at Houston Texans
26,973,000
Wild Card Playoff
