The start of the National Football League season from GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday night in Kansas City, Mo., a rematch of the AFC Championship Game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens, delivered the most-watched NFL Kickoff Game of all time. The broadcast on NBC Sports and streaming live on Peacock averaged a total audience delivery of 28.9 million viewers across both platforms, according to same day custom fast national data from Nielsen Media Research and digital data from Adobe Analytics.
Additionally, the game topped the average of 27.5 million viewers attained in last year’s NFL Kickoff Game between the Chiefs and Detroit Lions by 5%. The lead Sunday Night Football broadcast team, consisting of play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico, analyst Cris Collinsworth and reporter Melissa Stark, were on the call for the matchup.
The coverage of the game from NBC Sports peaked at 33 million viewers in the second quarter during the quarter-hour of 9:30 to 9:45 p.m. EST. Moreover, the average minute audience for the live stream on Peacock, NBC Sports Digital platforms and NFL Digital platforms finished at 4.6 million viewers, marking the second-most simulstreamed NBC NFL game ever. The total is higher than three Super Bowl broadcasts on NBC, trailing only Super Bowl LVI in 2022, and is up 65% from the NFL Kickoff Game last year when the audience in this category equated to 2.8 million viewers.
As the Chiefs won the game 27-20, the Kansas City designated market area achieved the highest national television household rating of 43.4 while attaining an 80 share. The Baltimore DMA finished second with a 24.5 rating and 60 share, while Denver placed third with an 18.0 rating and 50 share. As a whole, the broadcast of the game from 8:45 p.m. EST to 11:55 p.m. EST collected a national TV household rating of 12.6/37. Furthermore, the 37 share is the largest for any regular-season game on NBC since it debuted the Sunday Night Football broadcast package in 2006.
When utilizing the Big Data + Panel methodology from Nielsen Media Research, the matchup would be the only NFL Kickoff game with an estimated total audience delivery of more than 30 million viewers. This calculation is attained by adding the 4.6 million streaming viewers to the projected Nielsen average increase to 25.7 million viewers, thus representing an overall total audience delivery of 30.3 million viewers.
NBC Sports will continue its broadcast of the opening weekend in the National Football League when it presents the prime time matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers from Sao Pãulo, Brazil on Friday night. Weekend coverage concludes this Sunday, Sept. 8 for the season debut of Sunday Night Football when Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions welcome Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams for a rematch of a 2023 NFL Wild Card game from Ford Field in Detroit, Mich.
