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The NFL is off to one of its best starts in almost a decade when it comes to the average number of people tuning in for games on television and through streaming. The league reports the average through week 5 is 17.5 million viewers, up 1% from last season and the highest since 2015.
NFL games have ranked as 29 of the Top 30 shows (television plus digital) since the start of the regular season. NBC carried the Baltimore Ravens-Kansas City Chiefs game to start the season on this side of the ocean and drew an average audience of 28 million.
Kansas City, the two-time defending Super Bowl champions who often have a special guest at their games in Taylor Swift, has been involved in four of the top five games so far this year. Their week two matchup with the Cincinnati Bengals on CBS fell just below 28 million at 27.9.
The Baltimore Ravens-Dallas Cowboys game, carried by FOX Sports, comes in at No. 3 on the list as the only other game over 27 million, averaging 27.3 million viewers. Both the Chiefs-Falcons game for NBC and the Chiefs-Chargers game on CBS averaged more than 24 million viewers, with the NBC broadcast at 24.5 million and CBS at 24.2 million.
