Viewership Declines for Patriots-Broncos AFC Championship While Seahawks-Rams NFC Title Game Sees Slight Gains
The New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks emerged victorious in their respective NFL conference championship games over the weekend, paving the way for a rematch in Super Bowl LX. However, audience enthusiasm appears to be less robust compared to last year’s playoffs, particularly when anticipating the Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl clash.
On Sunday, the Seahawks defeated the Los Angeles Rams 31-27 in the NFC title game, attracting 46 million viewers on Fox. This marks a modest 4% increase compared to last year’s Commanders-Eagles matchup. Nevertheless, considering Nielsen’s recent adjustments in viewer measurement, this difference may be negligible.
This season, all networks adopted Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel metrics, which integrates traditional panel measurements with data from cable set-top boxes and smart TVs across approximately 45 million households and 75 million devices. According to Nielsen, networks can compare this data with last year’s panel-only numbers. However, due to the broader range of measured devices, there is likely an automatic 4%-6% increase. Additionally, Nielsen’s inclusion of out-of-home viewing in its NFL statistics over the past year may further inflate these numbers.
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Despite these adjustments, viewership may actually decline when measured against last year’s stats. For instance, Nielsen reported 44.2 million viewers for the Eagles’ win in 2025.
It’s worth noting the Seahawks peaked at 49.7 million viewers from 9:30-9:45 p.m. ET, coinciding with the game’s conclusion.
Meanwhile, the AFC Championship Game featured the Patriots defeating the Denver Broncos 10-7, drawing an average of 48.6 million viewers on CBS. The network claims this number represents a 10% increase from last year’s comparable early game, although it actually refers to the NFC Championship since the games changed time slots this season.
When compared to last year’s Chiefs-Bills game, which sent Kansas City back to the Super Bowl, this year’s AFC matchup saw a significant decline of approximately 15.5%. In fact, it is the least-watched AFC title game since the Bengals faced the Chiefs in 2022.
Nielsen indicates that the audience peaked at nearly 58 million viewers at the game’s conclusion, aligning closely with last year’s averages. Despite this year-over-year drop, the AFC Championship remains the second most-watched game of the season thus far, following the Chiefs-Cowboys Thanksgiving matchup, which averaged 57 million viewers.
CBS’s efforts to compare this year’s AFC title game to last year’s 3 p.m. broadcast highlight the potential challenges of midafternoon matchups. However, the NFC game also faced difficulties, exhibiting a 20% decrease in viewership compared to last year’s primetime AFC Championship.
As for what these trends may mean for Super Bowl LX, the full postseason viewership remains up by 5%, and the NFL has reported steady viewer gains throughout the season.
