NEW YORK—With the NFL playoffs scheduled to start this weekend, the league said its 2025 regular season averaged 18.7 million television viewers per game. That’s the second-highest season average on record and up 10% from the 2024 season and 7% from 2023.
That put the 2025 season’s viewership at just below the record set in 1989, when average viewing was about 19 million.
Viewing data from Nielsen also highlighted how important the NFL has become to networks. NFL game telecasts have accounted for 89 of the top 100 shows on TV since the start of the 2025 regular season.
ESPN reported that all of the rightsholders also saw increases: Prime Video's "Thursday Night Football" was up 16%; CBS up 11%; ESPN/ABC's "Monday Night Football" up 9%; NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” up 9%; and Fox tallying a 6% increase.
The most popular regular season games are listed below in a graphic from the NFL posted to X. It shows that the most-watched regular game was the 4:25 p.m. (ET) Kansas City Chiefs-Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game on CBS, which reached 57.3 million viewers:
