NFL Conference Championship Games Score Watch-Time Increases
The NFL’s two nail-biting conference championship games on Sunday delivered large TV audiences for the league – and of course, network partners as well. Data from Inscape reveals the extent of the NFL’s big day, and how it even managed to top last year's watch-time.
On Sunday, 38.62% of national linear TV watch-time was dedicated to NFL Playoff games, which is up from 36.02% on championship Sunday last year.
Including studio shows, that number leaps to 46.29%, which is also an increase compared to last year's 41.74%.
The top three most-watched programs on Sunday were all NFL-related too, with NFL games (38.62%) followed by NFL on Fox Postgame (2.87%) and The NFL Today (2.45%)
At 20.53%, this year's AFC Championship Game – the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Baltimore Ravens – accounted for a higher share of the NFL's watch-time than the NFC Championship Game between the San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions (17.18%).
TBD on whether that was due to any "Swift Lift" with Taylor Swift present this season; the AFC game on CBS beat the NFC game on Fox last year too, 19.83% to 15.52%.
It’s been a steady climb for the NFL’s ability to lock down TV minutes watched during the Sunday conference championship games, as incredible as that may seem given the league’s dominance already. In 2022, the championship games combined for just 32.88% of minutes watched watched on that Sunday, despite featuring two of the same teams as this year and last year’s game (both the Chiefs and 49ers have appeared in the games in all three years).
Growth in share of minutes watched on Fox also helped fuel success for the season premiere of Next Level Chef on the network. The cooking competition show accounted for 1.65% of watch-time on Sunday, which was No. 1 among all non-NFL programming. NCIS (1.43%) and Yellowstone (0.92%) were the only other non-NFL-related programs to come close by watch-time.
